Jihad

Six people have been detained in France on suspicion of recruiting candidates for jihad, a judicial source said Wednesday, as the number of French citizens travelling to Iraq and Syria increases.

As he set up shop in Kashmir's main city Thursday, Saleem Ahmed had little truck with Al-Qaeda's call to turn India's only Muslim-majority state a key battlefield of a new jihad across South Asia.
      

Foley execution rocks regional media

War correspondents in region cite a deteriorating press situation in the Middle East following the execution of US journalist James Foley.

The release of the videotaped beheading of an abducted US photojournalist by a masked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist sent shockwaves around the world.

Croatia's Security and Intelligence Agency, SOA, on Sunday warned that Islamist jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq are using Croatia as a "transit area on their way to and back from" the war zones of the Middle East.

The United States has launched a social media offensive against the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, setting out to win the war of ideas by ridiculing the militants with a mixture of blunt language and sarcasm.

Diplomats and experts are the first to admit that the digital blitz being waged on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube will never be a panacea to combat the jihadists.

Islamic State jihadists have killed more than 700 members of a tribe in eastern Syria in two weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Aug. 16.
      
Among the members of the Shaitat tribe killed were 100 fighters, but the rest were civilians, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
      

The Turkish government has denied claims that it has supported jihadist militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), recently renamed the Islamic State.

“We do not have any data in hand on that issue,” Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay told reporters on Aug. 14 when asked about claims that jihadists have received treatment in Turkey.

Abdulahim Maktouf, an Iraqi who fought in a Bosnian Army ‘mujahideen’ unit during the conflict, was sentenced to five years in jail at his retrial for illegally detaining Croat civilians.

The leader of the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, purportedly ordered all Muslims to obey him in a video released July 5 on social media.

The hitherto elusive Baghdadi, who on June 29 proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq, made his appeal in a sermon delivered on Friday in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Jihadists groups in Iraq, Kenya and Nigeria have killed dozens of pepole since the start of the World Cup, mirroring their actions four years ago It’s not just football fans whose football fever soars during a World Cup. So does that of militant Islamists and jihadists with deadly consequences.