Kurdish forces say IS used chemical shells
IS militants recently fired mortar shells filled with a chemical substance, possibly chlorine, at Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen near the Iraqi town of Sinjar, a Kurdish officer and a medical official have said, AP reports.
Nine Kurdish soldiers, known as Peshmerga, were admitted to Azadi Teaching Hospital in the city of Dohuk last Friday with symptoms including vomiting, nausea, shortness of breath and itching, the director of the hospital, Dr. Afrasiab Mussa Yones, told The Associated Press.
He said that the symptoms suggested that chlorine had been used, but that further analysis was needed. Yones said he would send samples taken from the soldiers' clothes for analysis.
MSF President calls Syria a 'kill box'
Dr Joanne Liu, the international president of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), has called Syria a "kill box" and said that deliberate attacks against civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, are "now routine."
Liu's full statement, made in the wake of a deadly airstrike on a MSF-supported hospital in Syria's Idlib province earlier this week, is here. Here are some excerpts.
Today in Syria, the abnormal is now normal. The unacceptable is accepted.
Relentless, brutal, and targeted attacks on civilians are the dominant feature of this war. In addition to the countless numbers of dead, hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing for their lives. Many of them trapped, and denied the fundamental right to flight.
Deliberate attacks against civilian infrastructure, including hospitals struggling to provide lifesaving assistance, are routine.
Healthcare in Syria is in the crosshair of bombs and missiles. It has collapsed.
Let me be clear: attacks on civilians and hospitals must stop. The normalisation of such attacks is intolerable.
The latest attack came just three days ago, on 15 February, in Maraat al-Numan, Idlib Province. At 9:00 a.m., airstrikes destroyed a hospital supported by MSF. At least 25 people were killed, among them nine medical personnel and 16 patients. Ten others were wounded.
According to accounts from medical staff onsite, four missiles struck the hospital in an attack lasting about two minutes. Forty minutes later, after rescuers arrived, the site was bombed again.
These secondary strikes- in military jargon – known as “double taps” – that target rescue and medical personnel trying to save the injured are outrageous.
Swedish teen arrested in Austria found guilty of planning to join IS
A 17-year-old Swedish girl arrested in Austria has been found guilty of planning to join IS militants, TheLocal.se reports.
The teenager has been sentenced to 12 months in prison in Vienna but told that she will not have to serve any more time in jail because she has been remanded in custody since her arrest in December.
The girl's mobile phone records formed a core part of the evidence given at the trial. They included messages such as "but if they cannot be converted, they must be killed" and texts in which she expressed happiness about the Paris terror attacks in November 2015.
[IS] propaganda photos were also discovered, including images of beheadings.
IS Twitter reach 'declining' report says
The IS group's English-language reach on Twitter has stalled in recent months, according to a new report from George Washington University's Program on Extremism.
Accounts being suspended by the social network have limited the group's growth and in some cases devastated the viral reach of users, the report claims.
The World Food Programme tweeted this photo of children in the besieged Syrian town of Moadamiya al-Sham, after desperately-needed humanitarian aid was delivered yesterday.
MSF: Syrian gov't not given GPS data of hospital hit by strike
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said that it decided not to formally inform the Syrian government or its Russian allies about the location of some of its medical facilities like the one in Marat al-Numan in Idlib province that was destroyed in a deadly airstrike this week, AP report.
MSF said that repeated attacks against hospitals and other facilities during the Syrian civil war has led medical staffers to ask MSF not to give GPS coordinates of some facilities.
MSF seeks independent enquiry into bombing of Syria hospital
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called for an independent investigation into airstrikes that killed 25 people at an MSF-sponsored hospital in Syria's Idlib province, Reuters report.
MSF's international president Dr. Joanne Liu said that there was a probability that the airstrikes were carried out by the government-led alliance.
"We say probability because we don't have more facts than the accounts from our staff," Liu told a news briefing.
"The only thing predominantly in the region is the Syrian government-led coalition."
U.S.-led strikes kill 15 civilians in northeast Syria: activists
AFP has more on the reports that U.S.-led airstrikes in northeast Syria today have killed 15 civilians, including three children.
AFP is quoting the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights who say that the strikes hit four IS-controlled villages in Hasakah province.
Nine IS militants were also killed in the strikes, according to SOHR.
SOHR say that since Feb. 16, a total of 38 civilians have been killed by U.S.-led strikes on IS-controlled areas of Hasakah province including 15 in the town of Al-Shadadi on Feb. 16 and eight in an IS-controlled village on Feb. 17.
The coalition has reportedly stepped up airstrikes in Hasakah province, AFP say, amid a new operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces alliance in the south of the province.
No-fly zone unlikely to help 'our war on terror' near Aleppo: Kremlin spokesman
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that the creation of a no-fly zone in northern Syria will not help combat terrorism there, RIA Novosti reports.
Peskov was responding to comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said on Feb. 17 that some kind of no-fly zone could help ease the humanitarian situation in northern Aleppo province.
"The thing is that active operations are being carried out there, aimed at fighting terrorist organizations, who are also hiding out in those areas, so these sorts of things [no fly zones] would be unlikely to contribute to the effectiveness of our war on terrorism," Peskov said.