Global terrorism thread

Female residents originally from al-Bab in northern Syria who were living in nearby Manbij when it was liberated have been so inspired by the fighting of the female soldiers in the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) that they have created their own all-female battalion ahead of the battle for their city.

“When Isis invaded al-Bab city, they detained my brother and killed him. I have been criticising the practices of Isis for a long time. I have been arrested and tortured several times at the hands of Isis terrorists,” one new member told local news.

“An Isis female jihadi was responsible for torturing me in a very brutal way. And now I’ve joined the al-Bab Military Council in order to fight those terrorists.”

Manbij town was liberated in August after two years of Isis’ rule by the mostly Kurdish coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) following two months of intense fighting.

Local SDF military commanders immediately set about creating a ‘military council’ to plan the next offensive - retaking al-Bab, 30 miles (50 kilometres) away.

Since mid-August both Kurdish-led and Turkish forces have been edging closer to the city of approximately 60,000 people.

“I joined the council with the belief in the necessity of liberating our territory from Isis. The terrorist group has killed or displaced many of our people in al-Bab,” a new recruit called Ahman said.

In Manbij, more than 50 women have joined the local police force to protect their hard-won freedoms, it was reported last month.

Shortly after militants were driven from the city, local news reported Manbij’s women were also organising an all-female council to protect and promote the rights of women and girls in future.

Elsewhere in Kurdish Syria on Tuesday, the administration based in Rojava announced it was newly creating a ‘federal army’ across its three cantons in the north of the country.

Syrian Kurds declared their autonomy after repelling President Bashar al-Assad’s army shortly after the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011.

The Kurdish resistance movement - long outlawed as a terrorist group in Turkey - is strongly committed to feminist principles: most local administrations have quotas for female politicians and officials, and they have parity with men in the military.

The Syrian Kurdish fighting forces have been some of the most successful in repelling the advance of Isis and other Islamist groups - but with the tide now turning against Isis’ caliphate, Rojava is focusing its attention on consolidating its territory in the face of strong opposition from the governments in both Syria and Turkey.

SAS soldiers have been told to “use whatever means possible” to kill or capture the militants, according to the Sunday Times.

Using an early-'90s armored BMW he purchased four months prior to the October 21 attack, a Peshmerga soldier named Ako Rahman rescued dozens of citizens wounded or trapped by snipers in Kirkuk—a city in the Kurdish controlled region of Iraq.

"After we arrived at the scene, we saw many wounded individuals among the security forces and civilians and no one was able to approach them due to the IS snipers. Therefore we decided to help those wounded people since bullets could not penetrate my car," Rahman told Kurdish news outlet Bas News.

Over the course of the attack, which lasted several days, Rahman used his bulletproof sedan to transport 70 injured people to the hospital, encountering gunfire throughout the mission.

“There are marks from 50 to 60 bullets on the body of my car and many of them hit the front and the windshield of the car," Rahman told Kurdish news outlet Rudaw.

Governor Dr. Najmaldin Karim presented the Peshmerga fighter with an award of 500,000 Iraqi dinars ($385) on November 1. BMW reportedly wanted to honor Rahman a bit more for his bravery and sacrifice. The German auto manufacturer offered him a brand new BMW in exchange for the bullet ridden E32, which it planned on displaying on its corporate campus. He declined the offer and instead it would be given to Sulaymaniyah, a local Kurdish museum.

The former English teacher from the town of Hammam al-Alil, south of the jihadists' Mosul stronghold, recalls hearing victims' cries of agony as he hid with dozens of neighbors in the shadow of one of the group's detention centers.

"The devil himself would be astounded by Daesh's methods of torture. It is beyond the imagination," said Ahmed, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Iraq's army and federal police, participating in a U.S.-backed offensive launched last month to recapture the largest population center under the jihadists' control, retook this area over the weekend.

As the forces advance, details of Islamic State's brutality and growing desperation, which have trickled out of its self-proclaimed caliphate over the past two years, are being reinforced by first-hand accounts of residents.

Standing on the road between his house and the jail on Monday, Ahmed told Reuters that no part of Hammam al-Alil had been spared from the ultra-hardline Sunni Islamists' violence.

In his street alone, he said six people he knew had been executed, including his father and a family of three that lived next door.

Aid organizations, local officials and Mosul residents have cited reports that Islamic State executed dozens of people in Hammam al-Alil and barracks nearby over the course of a week, on suspicion of planning rebellions in and around Mosul to aid the advancing troops.

Abdul Rahman al-Waggaa, a member of the Nineveh provincial council, told Reuters last month that most of the victims were former police and army members.

Islamic State had used the town's agricultural college as "a killing field" for hundreds of people in the days before the Iraqi government advance, Ahmed said.

"They would torture them inside and then take them out of the neighborhood and either shoot them or slit their throats."

Police backed up his accounts, but the road to the college was still lined with improvised explosive devices (IE Ds) on Monday, preventing Reuters from visiting.

The military says its forces at the complex have discovered the decapitated corpses of at least 100 civilians.

HIDING

The jail opposite Ahmed's house was once the home of an army officer who fled Islamic State's blitz across a third of Iraq's territory in 2014. Its walls are covered in soot from a fire apparently set by fleeing fighters, but metal cages only slightly larger than an adult male are still intact.

Ahmed, who learned English when U.S. forces occupied Iraq for nine years after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, was delighted to speak to a foreign reporter after two years during which he feared he would be killed for using English.

"We have been living in hell, like zombies," he said.

Residents still in Hammam al-Alil on Monday told how they packed into homes with nearly 100 other people each for days to avoid being forced to flee to Mosul as Islamic State retreated.

"They didn't know we were here. We didn't make a sound. No lights, no sound, no speaking at all," said Ahmed.

His family had stored food to avoid going outside but everyone lost weight, he said. Using the bathroom was a challenge.

As the town's remaining residents emerged from their homes on Monday, neighbors greeted each other for the first time in many days.

An army lieutenant, back in Hammam al-Alil after taking refuge on a mountain for more than a week following the escalation of executions of security personnel, said he witnessed Islamic State kill people in a nearby field.

Thousands of civilians, including many from villages further south who had been forced to serve as human shields for the jihadists, escaped to government camps over the weekend while others were forced deeper into Islamic State-held territory.

"If the forces had come just a few days later, we would be in Mosul now. Daesh wanted to take us," said Ahmed.

Others were not so lucky.

Tariq, an engineering student, said he had barricaded himself inside his home with dozens of neighbors for four days before Islamic State fled, refusing fighters' demands to leave with them.

At one point, he said, the fighters had donned army fatigues and managed to trick a few families into believing they were arriving Iraqi forces. When the civilians went out to greet them, Tariq said, they were executed.

"Even a one-year-old baby, they put a bullet in his head."