Dubbed “Jihadi George,” El Shafee Elsheikh has been described by former hostages as the “most brutal” member of the notorious Islamic State kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles.”
“George was the most crazy one,” Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa said of his 33-year-old former IS captor.
The Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) strongly denounced on Monday the military escalation by the Houthi militias against civilian targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
It urged the US to re-designate the Houthis as a terrorist group pursuant to the UN Security Council Resolution 2624.
Russia announced Tuesday it will significantly scale back military operations near Ukraine’s capital and a northern city, as the outlines of a possible deal to end the grinding war came into view at the latest round of talks.
Ukraine’s delegation at the conference, held in Istanbul, laid out a framework under which the country would declare itself neutral and its security would be guaranteed by an array of other nations.
Drawing on the role of Turkish drones in bolstering Ukraine’s defense, Erdogan has urged NATO partners to lift restrictions on military sales to Turkey. But US sanctions remain a tough row to hoe.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to have returned buoyed from the March 24 NATO summit in Brussels, hoping that the Russian war against Ukraine will encourage Western nations to remove bans on military sales to Turkey. While European countries are likely to be more flexible, US sanctions remain a tough row to hoe.
Above is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from March 19 to March 25, 2022. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents are included in the Nigeria Security Tracker.
In the early months of 2003, I was in the Kurdish capital Erbil in northern Iraq, an area outside Iraqi government control, waiting for the start of the US-led invasion. The Kurds were all too accustomed to conventional warfare, but what truly terrified them was the prospect of Saddam Hussein’s forces using chemical weapons.
A Turkey-Israel gas pipeline is being discussed behind the scenes as one of Europe’s alternatives to Russian energy supplies, but it will take complicated maneuvering to reach any deal, government and industry officials in both countries say.
South Sudan’s vice president is urging regional mediators to intervene to protect the country’s fragile peace deal, warning of a return to war amid alleged attacks by government troops on his forces.
Riek Machar accused President Salva Kiir of violating a 2018 truce in a letter to the regional mediator, the 8-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian central bank, the government, and Gazprom to present proposals by March 31 for gas payments in rubles from “unfriendly countries,” including all European Union states.
Russia is working out methods for accepting payments for its natural-gas exports in rubles and it will make decisions in due course should European countries refuse to pay in the Russian currency, the Kremlin said on March 28.
The Pentagon on Monday released a $773 billion budget request for fiscal year 2023, asking Congress for a big spending boost to build new weapons to curb an emergent Chinese military, check Russia’s aggression in Europe and boost pay for troops.