Page 9 - Aruba Today
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WORLD NEWS 9
Thursday 19 November 2015
Syrian activists: 3 days of strikes on Raqqa kill 33 in IS
BASSEM MROUE possible to give a precise
Associated Press
BEIRUT (AP) — Airstrikes on figure.
the northern Syrian city
of Raqqa and its outskirts Zeid al-Thabet, a member
have killed at least 33 Is-
lamic State group fighters of an anti-IS media col-
over the past three days,
an opposition group that lective that covers Raqqa
tracks Syria’s civil war said
Wednesday. known as the Sound and
The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Picture Organization, also
Rights said the fighters
were mostly killed when reported a “large number”
their checkpoints were at-
tacked by French and oth- of IS fighters killed but had
er warplanes.
France has launched mul- no precise figure.
tiple airstrikes against IS fol-
lowing attacks, claimed The Observatory reported
by the militant group, that
killed at least 129 people in that IS fighters’ families
Paris on Friday. Russia also
intensified its bombard- are fleeing Raqqa to the
ment of Raqqa after Mos-
cow’s FSB security service northern Iraqi city of Mosul
announced Tuesday that
a bomb brought down a because of the intensity of
Russian plane in Egypt’s
Sinai Peninsula last month, the bombing, saying they
killing all 224 people on-
board. IS also claimed that feel Raqqa is no longer
attack.
The Observatory said that safe. The report could not
more IS fighters are be-
lieved to have been killed be independently verified.
in the airstrikes, but their
bodies were so severely Meanwhile, the ex-wife
dismembered it wasn’t
of IS leader Abu Bakr al- This photo shows a French army Mirage 2000 jet on the tarmac of an undisclosed air base as
Baghdadi appeared part of France’s Operation Chammal launched in support of the US-led coalition against Islamic
Wednesday in court in Bei- State group. (French Air Force/ECPAD via AP)
rut, where she is being tried Kamal Khalaf, since she first chance to see his son. the child in his arms before
was detained last Novem- After asking the judge’s the baby was taken away
on terrorism-related charg- ber. For Khalaf, it was his permission, he briefly held by a female soldier.q
es. Saja al-Dulaimi was
detained in Lebanon last
year after she crossed into
the country illegally with
her husband using forged
identity cards.
Al-Dulaimi is now married
to a Palestinian man, who
is being detained on simi-
lar charges. She walked
into the courtroom car-
rying her four-month-old
son Youssef, born while she
was in jail. It was her first
time seeing her husband,
Islamic State says it has killed
Norwegian, Chinese captives
JOSEPH KRAUSS political philosophy from
JON GAMBRELL Porsgrunn, south of Oslo.
Associated Press The Chinese man had
CAIRO (AP) — The Islamic been identified as Fan Jin-
State group said Wednes- ghui, 50, a self-described
day that it has killed Nor- “wanderer” from Beijing
wegian and Chinese cap- who once taught middle
tives after earlier demand- school.
ing ransoms for the two The militants did not say
men. when or where the two
The extremist group pub- were captured when an-
lished two images of the nouncing their captivity
men in the second-to-last in a previous issue of the
page of its English-lan- magazine, which showed
guage magazine, saying them in yellow jumpsuits.
they had been “executed However, the last post
after being abandoned by on Grimsgaard-Ofstad’s
kafir nations and organiza- Facebook page, dated
tions.” ‘’Kafir” is the Arabic Jan. 24, said he had ar-
word for infidel. In the im- rived in Idlib, Syria, on his
ages, the men both ap- way to Hama. Norwegian
peared to have been shot Prime Minister Erna Solberg
to death. told a press conference
The Norwegian man had that the government can-
been identified as Ole Jo- not confirm the killing, but
han Grimsgaard-Ofstad, said “we have no reasons
48, a graduate student in to doubt it.”q
