Anti-Shi'ism

A powerful explosion ripped through a mosque in southwest Pakistan during Friday evening prayers, killing a senior police officer and at least 11 others, police said.

The bombing also wounded 11 other worshipers in the city of Quetta, the capital of the restive Baluchistan province, said local police chief Mohammad Ajmal.

At least 10 civilians were killed, 20 others injured on Sunday in Syrian regime's intensified attacks on settlement areas in Idlib de-escalation zone, according to initial reports.

More than 235,000 people have fled the Idlib region over the past two weeks, the UN said on Dec. 27, amid heightened regime and Russian attacks on Syria's last major opposition bastion.

The mass displacement between 12 and 25 December has left the violence-plagued Maaret al-Numan region in southern Idlib "almost empty," the UN said in a statement.

Intense attacks by Bashar al-Assad's regime, Russia and Iran backed-groups have forced thousands of civilians to flee from Syria's Idlib province which has been designated de-escalation zone.

Since the offensive began last week, the regime and its allies have launched a military campaign mainly in the cities of Maarat Al-Numan and Saraqib as well as the surrounding rural areas.

Clashes between Syrian regime forces and armed groups in the country's last major opposition bastion have killed more than 60 on both sides in the past 24 hours despite United Nations calls for de-escalation, a war monitoring group said on Dec. 20.

The first Islamic State foreign terrorist has already been repatriated from Turkey, according to a spokesman for the country's interior ministry, quoted by private NTV television. On November 14, the same procedure will be applied to seven other terrorists of German descent, the spokesman added. The already repatriated jihadist is from the United States. 

The former ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed with military and intelligence cooperation between Turkey and the U.S., the Turkish defense minister has said, noting that he did not know Baghdadi was in Syria's Idlib before the operation.

The Islamic State is named its new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurashi, AFP and Reuters reported.

The terrorist organization needed a new leader after the assassination of the former one - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The organization also suffered a second defeat after the abolition of Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, an ID spokesman who would almost certainly have taken the lead.

U.S. Marine Corps General Kenneth McKenzie, who oversaw this covert operation, said six ID fighters were killed there, including Baghdadi. He added that members of other militant groups were also killed in the raid.

The Pentagon has released first pictures and video footage of a commando operation in Syria that led to the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, according to world agencies. Five more members of the group and two children were abolished during the operation.