Associated Press
Baghdad, June 5: In March, a senior commander with the Islamic State (IS) group was driving through northern Syria on orders to lead militants in the fighting there when a drone blasted his vehicle to oblivion. The killing of Abu Hayjaa al-Tunsi, a Tunisian jihadi, sparked a panicked hunt within the group’s ranks for spies who could have tipped off the US-led coalition about his closely guarded movements. By the time it was over, the group would kill 38 of its own members on suspicion of acting as informers. They were among dozens of IS members killed by their own leadership in recent months in a vicious purge after a string of air strikes killed prominent figures.
Others have disappeared into prisons and still more have fled, fearing they could be next as the jihadi group turns on itself in the hunt for moles, according to Syrian opposition activists, Kurdish militia commanders, several Iraqi intelligence officials and an informer for the Iraqi government who worked within IS ranks. The fear of informers has fuelled paranoia among the militants’ ranks. A mobile phone or internet connection can raise suspicion. As a warning to others, IS has displayed the bodies of some suspected spies in public or used particularly gruesome methods, including reportedly dropping some into a vat of acid.
IS “commanders don’t dare come from Iraq to Syria because they are being liquidated” by air strikes, said Bebars al-Talawy, an opposition activist in Syria who monitors the jihadi group. Over the past few months, American officials have said that the US has killed a string of top commanders from the group, including its “minister of war” Omar al-Shishani, feared Iraqi militant Shaker Wuhayeb, also known as Abu Wahib, as well as a top finance official known by several names, including Haji Iman, Abu Alaa al-Afari or Abu Ali Al-Anbari.
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the biggest city held by IS across its “caliphate” stretching across Syria and Iraq, a succession of militants who held the post of “wali,” or governor, in the province have died in air strikes. As a result, those appointed to governor posts have asked not to be identified and they limit their movements, the Iraqi informer said. The purge comes at a time when IS has lost ground in both Syria and Iraq. An Iraqi government offensive recaptured the western city of Ramadi from IS earlier this year, and another mission is underway to retake the nearby city of Fallujah.
Meanwhile, British special forces have launched a multi-national counter-terrorist operation as it emerged that Islamic State (IS) militants are planning “a summer of carnage” in London and other cities during the Euro 2016 football championship, according to a media report Sunday.
Saudi the real ‘terror sponsor’
Tehran: Tehran Sunday dismissed its renewed blacklisting by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism charging that it was US allies including Saudi that were the real culprits. The Iranian foreign ministry noted its role in neighbouring Iraq supporting the government against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group independently of a US-led coalition as well as its backing for the Syrian regime against jihadists and other rebels, some of them backed by Saudi Arabia. Washington “turns a blind eye to the broad political and financial support by Saudi Arabia and its other allies to this ominous phenomenon in the world,” foreign ministry spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said.
