28 killed in Syrian army strikes on IS-held town

Beirut: Islamic State has welcomed more than 1,100 minors among its ranks in Syria since the beginning of this year, referring to them as the “caliphate cubs”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, or SOHR reported on Thursday. The group’s website was not opening on Wednesday afternoon.

The report out of Mosul came as U.S. Sen.

A screenshot of the hacked website provided by the Observatory showed an image of director Rami Abdel Rahman’s face photoshopped onto the body of an IS hostage dressed in orange and seemingly about to be beheaded by a knife-wielding jihadist.

“As with any military effort, there will be periods of progress but there are also going to be some setbacks, as we’ve seen with ISIL’s gains in Ramadi in Iraq and in central and southern Syria“, he said, according to UPI.

A Kurdish party spokesman said 145 ISIL fighters participated in the meal (called an iftar) and 45 of them died a short time later. Yet the monitoring group said it will continue its work without the website for now, using its social media presence to provide new updates.

Syrian aerial bombardment on a residential area and a crowded market in a town in northern Aleppo province has reportedly killed dozens of people, including women and children. The change in tactic is likely due to Turkey’s border crackdown, which has reduced the flow of foreign fighters, and forced the Islamic State group to improvise, according to SOHR.