Click to see full-size image.
Five fighters from the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were wounded on April 23 after shooting down what appears to be an Iranian-made suicide drone over the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar in a very unusual incident.
Ghazi al-Muhammadi, head of the security committee in al-Anbar, told Shafaq News that the PMF detected an unidentified drone that crashed in the Rutba desert in the al-Rahaliya area, and dealt with the situation “quickly and professionally.”
According to the official, when PMF fighters approached the drone, it exploded, slightly wounding at least five of them.
Photos posted to social networks revealed that the drone was a version of an Iranian type codenamed by the United States military and intelligence as KAS-04.
Click to see full-size image.
Factions from the so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) coalition, which is linked to the PMF but not officially recognized by the government like the force, launched multiple attacks against Israel using versions of the KAS-04 after the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip.
The drone downed in al-Anbar was most likely launched by Yemeni Houthis (Ansar Allah). Earlier in the day, the group announced that it had launched a Yafa drone at a “vital target” near the city of Tel Aviv in central Israel.
The Yafa is a version of the KAS-04 with a range of over 2,000 kilometers. But even with this range, the drone will not likely be able to reach Iraq from Yemen, then continue into Israel. Thus it is very possible that the drone was in fact launched from Iraq, not Yemen.
The Houthis launched several joint operations with the IRI last year, but since November the Iraqis have not announced any attack on Israel.
The incident in al-Anbar could have serious ramifications as Israel could view it as proof that attacks were still being launched from Iraq. Last year, Israel was reportedly about to launch strikes against the country before the IRI halted its operations.
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since syria is occupied now, it would be a perfect time to get muslims fighting one another using weapons found by the occupying forces and send them at the different groups in the area.
syria’s stolen daughters: the hts campaign to enslave alawite women in post-assad syria, the mass abduction and sexual enslavement of alawite women under sharaa’s rule mirrors the darkest atrocities of isis—yet is met with global silence. since december, when the former al-qaeda affiliate, hayat tahrir al-sham (hts), toppled the government of bashar al-assad, syria has witnessed a chilling wave of mysterious kidnappings of young women, predominantly from the alawite community.
why did the druze know that this would happen to their daughters and wives if hts reached their villages? the ass really ordered his army to peacefully hand over power to terrorist gangs? or is this just another russian lie?
the only lie is that ghassan alian has higher powers than katz and netanyahu. he himself cannot simply establish a druze state and declare it an independent state.
popular mobilization fighters wounded.
less popular now that they are wounded…
evidence continues to emerge that these women, primarily from the alawite religious sect, have been abducted and taken to live as sex slaves in idlib governorate, the traditional hts stronghold, by armed factions affiliated with the new syrian government.
shockingly, the mass kidnapping and enslavement of alawite women now being carried out by hts-affiliated factions mirrors the enslavement of the thousands of yezidi women by isis during the 2014 genocide in sinjar, iraq.
the activist who spoke out in a now deleted facebook post, hiba ezzedeen, a syrian activist from idlib, described her encounter with a woman she believes was captured and taken to the governorate as a sex slave during the wave of massacres carried out by government-affiliated factions and security forces against alawites in the country’s coastal areas on 7 march.”during my last visit to idlib, i was at a place with my brother when i saw a man i knew with a woman i had never met before,”
hasbara spammer ?
hiba explained “this man had been married multiple times before and is believed to currently have three wives. what caught my attention was the woman’s appearance—specifically, it was clear she didn’t know how to wear a hijab properly, and her scarf was draped haphazardly.”
after inquiring further, ezzedeen learned that the woman was from the coastal areas where the 7 march massacres, in which over 1,600 alawite civilians were killed, took place.
“this man had brought her to the village and married her, with no further details available. no one knew what had happened to her or how she got there, and naturally, the young woman was too afraid to speak,” ezzedeen added. because the situation was so strange and alarming to her, she began asking everyone she knew, “rebels, factions, human rights activists,” about the abduction of alawite women from the coast.
“unfortunately, many confirmed that this had indeed happened, and not just by one faction. based on what friends said, accusations point to factions of the national army and some foreign fighters, with varying motives,” she reported. syria’s new hts-led security forces have incorporated armed extremist groups, including uyghurs from the turkestan islamic party (tip) and syrian turkmen from factions of the turkish-intelligence-backed syrian national army
(sna), into their ranks since coming to power in damascus. various sna commanders and foreign extremists have been appointed to top positions in the syrian ministry of defense. while the hts-dominated general security units participated in the 7 march massacres in many areas, former sna and foreign fighter factions are believed to have led the campaign. militants went door to door in alawite villages and neighborhoods, executing all military-aged men they could find, looting homes,
and at times killing women,children, and the elderly. ezzedeen concluded her post by stating, “this is a serious issue that cannot be ignored. the government must immediately reveal the fate of these women and release them.”
rather than investigate the issue and seek to rescue the captive women, the hts-appointed governor of idlib issued an order for ezzedeen’s arrest, claiming she had “insulted the hijab.”
ezzedeen’s courageous revelation shed light on the fate of many young women from minority communities who had mysteriously disappeared in recent months, after president ahmad al-sharaa and hts toppled assad and took power in damascus.
a pattern of abductions
putler agreed to all of this, because if what skripal said about putler is true… and stop praising the pope for covered up pedophilia in the church and collaborated with the junto argentino.
they killed skripal because he said putin was a pedophile and pedophile al-sudani allowed eight-year-old girls to marry. i just hope tulsi gabbard really fixes the iraqi baath.
in one of the earliest cases, a young druze woman from the damascus suburb of jaramana, karolis nahla, disappeared on the morning of 2 february 2024, while on her way to university in the mezzeh area. the case was strange because no ransom was demanded, and nothing was heard of her again. over time, information began to trickle out that young women like karolis were being kidnapped and taken to idlib as slaves, as hiba ezzedeen finally confirmed.
do you now know why idf commander ghassan alian now has control over all of syria’s druze? now do you understand why the druze from syria called alian ghassan to come and restore order?
on 21 march, bushra yassin mufarraj, an alawite mother of two, went missing from the bus station in jableh. her husband later posted a video appeal stating she had been abducted and taken to idlib.
“my wife was taken captive in idlib. is there anything more cruel that could happen to a man in the world? that his wife and the mother of his children be in such circumstances,” he stated in a video appeal for help published on social media ten days later.
bushra’s disappearance was followed by a wave of kidnappings in the following days and weeks. the kurdish jinha agency reported on 25 march, citing local reports, that more than 100 people were kidnapped by armed groups in syria’s coastal regions over the previous 48 hours, including many women. on 5 april, 21-year-old katia jihad qarqat went missing. the last contact with her was at 9:40 in the morning at the medicine store at the bahra circle in jdeidat artouz in the damascus countryside.
her family pleaded that anyone who had seen or had any information about her should contact them.
on 8 april, 17-year-old sima suleiman hasno went missing at 11 am after leaving her school in the village of qardaha in the latakia countryside. sima was released four days later in damascus, where she was handed over to her aunt by members of the hts-led syrian government.
surveillance footage from shops near the abduction site circulated widely on social media, sparking widespread outrage.
“we are extremely worried about her. we ask that anyone with information about her, no matter how small, please contact us immediately,” her family said in a social media post. on 14 april, batoul arif hassan, a young married woman with a three-year-old child from safita, disappeared after visiting family in the village of bahouzi. contact was lost with her around 4 pm as she was traveling in a public minibus on the homs-safita road.
her family asked in a social media post for anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact her brother by phone. on the morning of 16 april, aya talal qassem, 23, was kidnapped after leaving her home in the coastal city of tartous. three days later, aya’s kidnapper freed her and sent her to tartous on the homs highway, only for the hts-led general prosecution service to detain her.
aya’s mother posted a video to social media explaining that her family was not allowed to be with her in detention and that her father was arrested when he insisted on seeing her. the mother said that the general prosecution service tried to force aya to give testimony, saying that she was not kidnapped but had instead run away with a lover. the mother added that she was pressured to tell such a story despite the presence of bleeding cuts and wounds on her body.
a video was posted online of the moment of her emotional return home to eagerly awaiting family and relatives.on 21 april, 26-year-old nour kamal khodr was abducted with her two daughters, 5-year-old naya maher qaidban and 3-year-old masa maher qaidban. nour and her daughters left their home in the village of al-mashrafa in rural homs at noon, heading toward a neighbor’s house. witnesses saw a masked group affiliated with the hts-led general
security abduct them, placing them in a vehicle marked with the group’s emblem before fleeing. echoes of sinjar
by 17 april, iraqi media outlet al-daraj reported on ten confirmed kidnappings of alawite women from the coastal regions. according to one survivor, pseudonym rahab, she was abducted in broad daylight and held in a locked room with another woman.
one woman who spoke to al-daraj under the pseudonym rahab was released after the kidnappers allegedly feared a raid by general security. she said she was kidnapped in broad daylight and held in a room with another woman, stating: “they tortured and beat us. we weren’t allowed to speak to each other, but i heard the kidnappers’ accents. one had a foreign accent and the other a local idlib accent. i knew this because they were cursing us because we were alawites.”
the other woman, held with her, pseudonym basma, remains in captivity. she was forced to call her family to tell them she was “fine” and to assure them that “they should not publish anything” about her abduction.
al-daraj also documented the case of an 18-year-old girl who was also kidnapped in broad daylight, from the countryside of a coastal city in syria.
her family later received a text message warning them to remain silent about her abduction or else she would be sent back dead. the girl later sent the family a voice recording from a phone number registered in the ivory coast, saying she was fine and unsure where she had been taken. the iraqi media outlet compared these cases to the isis genocide of yezidis in sinjar. over 6,400 yezidis were enslaved by isis in 2014. thousands were trafficked into syria and turkiye, sold as domestic or
sex slaves, or trained for battle. many remain missing. hts: the ideological continuity of isis that alawite women are now appearing in idlib is unsurprising given hts’s ideological lineage. hts, which seized idlib in 2015 with cia-supplied tow missiles, shares the same genocidal worldview as isis. it was founded by isis and led by sharaa – then known as abu mohammad al-julani, who was dispatched to syria in 2011 by the late “caliph”
abu bakr al-baghdadi to establish the al-nusra front, forerunner to hts in 2014, syria analyst sam heller therefore described nusra’s clerics as promoting “toxic — even genocidal — sectarianism,” towards alawites, based on the teachings of the medieval islamic scholar ibn taymiyyah. though hts and isis clashed in 2014, their ties endured. when baghdadi was killed in 2019, he was hiding in barisha – just outside hts-held sarmada. at the time, numerous enslaved yezidis were also
in idlib.the guardian confirmed this, quoting abdullah shrem, a yezidi rescuer, and alexander hug of the international commission on missing persons, who said missing persons were often held “in areas beyond government control.” in 2019, ali hussein, a yezidi from dohuk, told npr journalist jane arraf of his attempt to purchase the freedom of an 11-year-old yezidi girl who had been abducted by isis but was “sold to an emir of an al-qaida affiliate in syria –
jabhat al-nusra – [and] that she’s no longer a virgin.” “i told you $45,000 from the beginning. i know what they pay in raqqa. i told you, in turkey, they would pay $60,000 or $70,000 and take out the girl’s organs. but i don’t want to do that,” the isis contact threatened during the negotiation.