Looking for work? ISIS has jobs for oil engineers engineers in Iraq and Syria
ISIS has captured at least 11 oil refineries across Iraq and Syria, but a string of fatal mistakes and the eradication of some less-than-devoted engineers have taken their toll, and the more...
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Looking for work? ISIS has jobs for oil engineers engineers in Iraq and Syria - Video
Iraq: Tight security for Shi #128; #153;ite pilgrims marking Ashura
Iraq: Tight security for Shi????ite pilgrims marking Ashura In Iraq????s holy city of Kerbala, Shi????ite Muslims gathered for the annual Ashura religious commemoration have, for the...
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Iraq: Tight security for Shiite pilgrims marking Ashura - Video
Iraqi Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraq take shelter in the city of Dohuk on Aug. 5. The Yazidis, are a small community that follows an ancient faith and have been repeatedly targeted by jihadists. Yazidi leaders say several thousands members of the community have gone missing in recent months. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
Iraqi Yazidi women who fled the violence in the northern Iraq take shelter in the city of Dohuk on Aug. 5. The Yazidis, are a small community that follows an ancient faith and have been repeatedly targeted by jihadists. Yazidi leaders say several thousands members of the community have gone missing in recent months.
When the Islamic State took over large parts of northern Iraq this summer, including the areas where the minority Yazidi community lives, the U.S. carried out air strikes and halted the advance of the extremists.
Still, thousands of Yazidi women and girls have gone missing over the past few months and there are now reports they are being sold by the Islamic State as sex slaves.
Nuri Khalaf, a representative of the Yazidi tribes in Iraq's northern province of Sinjar, has been making the rounds in Washington, pleading with U.S. officials for help.
He also stopped by NPR's offices. When asked if many Yazidi women were being trafficked, he said, "That's real, it's real. Our girls have been sold for $300, $400 dollars, $500 dollars. It's real. It's happening."
Khalaf explained through an interpreter that he had to spend more than $9,000 to buy back his 13-year-old niece and five other women and girls after they were kidnapped by the Islamic State and forced to watch family members killed and abused.
He said he doesn't have any faith in Iraqi or Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, and that's why he and several other Yazidi representatives came to Washington.
"Iraq is our country but America was the one who came and liberated us from Saddam's regime, so it's the US responsibility to save us too," said Khalaf, referring to the 2003 invasion that ousted the Iraqi dictator.
Young Iraqi Yazidi refugees fill bottles with water at the Newroz camp in northeastern Syria on Aug. 14, after fleeing advances by Islamic State jihadists in Iraq. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
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Iraq's Yazidis Appeal For Help In Finding Their Missing Women
TELSKUF, IraqViewed from afar, the two-mile-long Mosul Dam is an impressive sight on the flat, sunbaked northern plains.
Move closer, though, and its appearance has a menacing air. The bullet-riddled causeway and abandoned guard posts tell of the dam's seizure by Islamic State terrorists in early August, and the bomb craters and flattened armored vehicles are evidence of its recapture by Kurdish fighters 12 days later. (Related: "Refugee Flood Heightens Long-Standing Tensions Between Turks and Kurds.")
The sorry state of Iraq's biggest dam, about 31 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Mosul city on the Tigris River, shows how water has become another weapon in the terror group's arsenal. But its steadily retreating reservoir tells another story, one of how Iraq's water shortage is growing more urgent by the day.
Built in the early 1980s to supply water, irrigate fields, control floods, and generate electricity, the dam offers an apt metaphor for the war-torn country's shaky foundation. Its dry spillways are plastered with cement to fill cracks, while the permeable gypsum base has required injections of grout to prevent its collapse since it opened.
Iraq was grappling with water woes long before the Islamic State jihadist group surged through its northwestern provinces and routed much of its army over the summer. But the sudden loss of prime agricultural land and the swift appropriation of scarce water resources have intensified the crisis.
This army of extremist Iraqis and foreign fighters, which now rules considerable territory in Syria and Iraq, has demonstrated a willingness to use water to defeat its foes. Iraqis in endangered areas whose livelihood depends on a reliable supply are panicked.
NG STAFF SOURCES: INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR; FAO; CIA
More Precious Than Gold
Ahmed Jemili, whose melon and mango farm in Kirkuk governorate stands about 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the front line, feels this fear keenly. Years of drought and cheap food imports have driven most neighboring farms out of business, and the grizzled Kurd's small landholding now lies isolated amid distant oil wells and a hastily constructed roadside encampment for refugees.
"For us, water is more precious than gold, and Daesh are just hoarding it," Jemili said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as the group initially branded itself.
Shi'ite Muslims perform with fire during commemorations Ashura in Najaf, November 3, 2014. REUTERS/ Alaa Al-Marjani
By Haider Kadhim
KERBALA Iraq (Reuters) - A gathering of millions of Shi'ite Muslims at shrines and mosques across Iraq for the Ashoura religious commemoration passed without any major attacks on Tuesday, under tight security imposed for fear of Islamic State bombers.
Crowds of hundreds of thousands of people in the holy city of Kerbala had largely dispersed in safety after nightfall, following a day of worship and prayer to mark the 7th century battle that divided the Muslim world into Sunnis and Shi'ites.
But seven pilgrims returning home from Kerbala were killed in separate roadside bomb attacks in the town of Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police and medical sources said.
Dozens of pilgrims were killed in Baghdad alone in the run-up to this year's event, despite an increase in security since suspected al Qaeda suicide bombers and mortar attacks killed 171 people during Ashoura in Kerbala and Baghdad in 2004.
But no mass killings were reported in Iraq as Shi'ites across the Muslim world commemorated the slaying of Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hussein at the battle of Kerbala in AD 680.
Gunmen shot dead at least five people in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, state news agency SPA reported, in what local residents said was an attack on Shi'ite Muslim worshippers on Monday night, testing already strained relations between Sunnis and Shi'ites across the Middle East.
Islamic State, seen as more ruthless than al Qaeda, says Shi'ites are infidels who deserve to be killed. The group, which seized large parts of northern Iraq this year, regularly claims responsibility for suicide bombings against Shi'ites, who are a minority in Islam but form the majority in Iraq.
In Kerbala, huge masses of pilgrims gathered outside the Shrine of Imam Hussein where the grandson of the Prophet is buried, chanting: "Hussein, Hussein, Hussein." During the ritual, Shi'ites beat their heads and chests and gash their heads with swords to show their grief at Hussein's suffering.
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Iraq Shi'ite Ashoura ritual escapes attacks