Members of Isis threatened to kill US president Barack Obama and turn America into a Muslim province as they cut a Kurdish soldier’s head off.
In a video translated by Memri, the Islamists described the results of shelling on Mosul, showing footage of the damage and children being treated in hospital.
The Islamists then beheaded a Kurdish soldier, saying, “Know, oh Obama, that we will reach America. Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House and transform America into a Muslim province.
“And this is my message to France and its sister, Belgium. We advise you that we will come to you with car bombs and explosive charges and we will cut off your heads.”
They also addressed the president of Kurdistan Masoud Barzani, “But as for you, oh Masoud, you dog, we are going to behead you and throw you into the trash bin of history. Know that we are men who fear no one. We will institute the laws of Allah, may he be exalted and praised.”
Losing ground
The Islamic State group has suffered “devastating” blows in Syria’s Kobane and on several Iraqi fronts, but analysts warn such victories in the fight against the jihadists cannot be replicated everywhere.
Kurdish fighters backed by US-led airstrikes this week ousted IS from most of Kobane, after a four-month battle whose symbolic importance had far outgrown the small Syrian town’s military value.
Simultaneously, Iraqi forces flushed the jihadists out of their last urban bastion in the eastern province of Diyala, further shrinking the borders of their self-proclaimed “caliphate”.
“Kobane shows that intense air strikes concentrated in a small space can succeed in containing IS,” said Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum.
“The air strikes were devastating. IS lost a lot of people in Kobane and they’re not even trying to spin it,” said Patrick Skinner, an analyst with the Soufan Group intelligence consultancy.
In a rare audio message released on Monday, IS spokesman and top leader Abu Mohamed al-Adnani made no reference to Kobane, which both sides had made the nexus of their military efforts.
According to observers, the jihadists lost around 1,200 fighters in the battle of Kobane and some US officials have said that American-led airstrikes killed 6,000 jihadists since the air war started in August.
Over the past month, Iraqi Kurdish forces have also scored significant victories, cutting the group’s main supply lines between their hub of Mosul and the Syrian border.
While the noose is tightening on Iraq’s second city — IS’ largest urban stronghold — the capital Baghdad is breathing more comfortably following the “liberation” of Diyala province.
“The group has definitely lost momentum. That goes against (the) notion of continual expansion” it is trying to project, Tamimi said.
“Generally, IS is either losing territory, not making advances at all, or having to recover territory,” as is the case in the strategic Iraqi town of Baiji, which the jihadists lost in November.
Source @ Timeslive
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