Death toll in Ebola epidemic reaches 2,622

LONDON: At least 2,622 people have died in the worst outbreak of Ebola virus in history, which has so far infected at least 5,335 people in West Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
In an update on the epidemic, which is raging through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and has spread into Nigeria and Senegal, the WHO said there were no signs yet of it slowing.
“The upward epidemic trend continues in the three countries that have widespread and intense transmission — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,” the United Nations health agency said.
It added that a surge in Ebola in Liberia is being driven primarily by a continued increase in the number of cases reported in the capital, Monrovia.
Meanwhile, Liberia’s president has welcomed promised US military aid to fight Ebola, saying she hopes it spurs the international community into further action.
President Barrack Obama announced Tuesday he will order 3,000 US military personnel to West Africa to help contain the disease. The US is also planning 17 treatment centers of 100 beds each in Liberia.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf called that commitment significant and said she hopes it will only be the beginning.
“We hope this decision by the United States will spur the rest of the international community into action,” she said in a statement read by a spokesman.
She said the world community has a stake in ending the outbreak that’s affected five nations.

Australia foils IS plot ‘in largest ever anti-terror raids’

SYDNEY: Australia’s largest ever counterterrorism raids on Thursday detained 15 people and foiled an alleged plot by Islamic State (IS) militants to conduct “demonstration killings,” including beheading a random member of the public.
A major pre-dawn operation was carried out across Sydney and Brisbane by more than 800 officers acting on some 25 search warrants. One person has so far been charged with serious terrorism-related offenses.
At least one gun was seized, along with a sword.
Omarjan Azari, 22, appeared in a Sydney court and was remanded in custody, charged with planning a terrorist act which prosecutors alleged was designed to “shock, horrify and terrify” the community.
The court heard he was instructed in a recent phone call by the most senior Australian member of IS, Afghan-born Mohammad Baryalei, to commit the atrocity.
Prosecutor Michael Allnutt alleged the plan involved the “random selection of persons to rather gruesomely execute” on camera and involved “an unusual level of fanaticism.”
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said the video was then to be sent back to IS’s media unit in the Middle East, where it would be released to the public.
The militants have in recent weeks broadcast video footage of three foreign nationals being beheaded in Syria.
The raids, which spanned multiple suburbs, came barely a week after Australia boosted the terror threat level to “high” for the first time in a decade on growing concern about militants returning from fighting in Iraq and Syria.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he had been briefed on intelligence that public beheadings had been ordered by IS militants.
“That’s the intelligence we received,” he said, prompting comparisons to the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death in a random attack on a street in England last year by two Muslim converts.
“The exhortations, quite direct exhortations, were coming from an Australian who is apparently quite senior in ISIL to networks of support back in Australia to conduct demonstration killings here in this country,” added the prime minister.
“So this is not just suspicion, this is intent and that’s why the police and security agencies decided to act in the way they have.”
The Australian government believes up to 60 Australians are fighting alongside members for IS, while another 100 were actively working to support the movement at home.
“These people, I regret to say, do not hate us for what we do, they hate us for who we are and how we live. That’s what makes us a target,” said Abbott.
“It’s important our police and security organizations be one step ahead of them and this morning they were.”
The latest raids followed the arrests of two people last week in Brisbane who were charged with allegedly recruiting, funding and sending fighters to Syria.

Child Farah Alswegh campaigns for Gaza kids

In this video, a child named “Farah Alswegh” calls on Nasser Qasabi and Abdullah Al-Sadhan to participate in Sayidaty Magazine’s solidarity campaign, sister publication of Arab News, for the children of Gaza. The campaign seeks to raise funds for children in war-torn Gaza Strip by encouraging members of the public to create a short videoclip of their youngsters gathering donations for the cause.

40 militants killed in northwest Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military said Wednesday it killed 40 insurgents and destroyed five of their hide-outs in fresh air attacks as part of a major offensive against the Taleban in the northwest.
Pakistan began the long-awaited push to clear the bases from North Waziristan district, on the Afghan border, in June after a bloody attack on Karachi airport finally sank faltering peace talks with the rebels.
A military statement said that “in precise aerial strikes” five hide-outs and ammunition dumps were destroyed and forty insurgents including foreigners were killed in the villages of Nawe Kili and Zaram Asar, north of Dattakhel in North Waziristan.

US strikes boost IS; more hostages possible: FBI

WASHINGTON: Support for Islamic State increased after US airstrikes began in Iraq and the militant group may take more hostages to try to force concessions from Washington, the FBI director told Congress on Wednesday.
Islamic State is “committed to instilling fear and attracting recruits” and to drawing public attention, as shown through its use of social media and in videos it released of the beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, said FBI Director James Comey.
“ISIL’s widespread use of social media and growing online support intensified following the commencement of US airstrikes in Iraq,” Comey, using an acronym for the group, said in prepared testimony for a congressional hearing on threats to the US homeland.
Islamic State and other outfits “may continue to try to capture American hostages in an attempt to force the US government and people into making concessions that would only strengthen ISIL and further its terrorist operations,” Comey said.
Islamic State draws an estimated $1 million per day from black market oil sales, smuggling, robberies, and ransom payments for hostages, according to Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
The US and UK, unlike some European nations, do not pay ransom for the release of hostages.
The group’s ability to attack the US homeland relies in part on its widespread and sophisticated use of social media to radicalize Americans, the national security officials told the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee.
The group used these tools as it drew recruits from more than 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria, who may return to their countries “battle-hardened, radicalized and determined to attack us,” Olsen, the top US counterterrorism official, said in prepared testimony.
Syria remains a prime training ground for independent or Al-Qaeda-aligned groups. “The rate of travelers into Syria exceeds the rate of travelers who went into Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 10 years,” he said.
The security officials testified as the US military prepared to expand American-led action against Islamic State to Syria, striking the militant group’s safe havens in that country to knock out infrastructure, logistics and command capabilities.

ISIS video is counterpoint to Obama's 'dismantle' and 'destroy' speech

The production is slick. The imagery: ominous.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is out with a new video from its Al Hayat Media Center. ISIS also produced the videos of the beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker.

It took nearly a week, but this appears to be the terror group's response to President Barack Obama's speech in which he said the U.S. objective in expanded airstrikes would be to "degrade, and ultimately destroy" ISIS.

The President is expected to speak Wednesday about the U.S. strategy for combating ISIS, which also calls itself the "Islamic State."

RELATED: What's the world going to do about ISIS?

The 52-second video plays much like a trailer for an action-adventure movie.

There are plenty of slow-motion explosions, and flames are shown engulfing American troops.

There are cameos from President George W. Bush and his "Mission Accomplished" banner, along with plenty of menacing fighters with masks over their faces, ready to execute civilians.

The producers even toss in a clip from Obama at the White House: "American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq," he says.

A lingering explosion puts an exclamation point on the whole thing.

And then the logo, fit for a Hollywood blockbuster: "Flames of War -- fighting has just begun ... Coming soon."

The video fades to black.

An ISIS magazine

Named after a town in northern Syria, Dabiq magazine publishes stories portending a battle between Islam and the West. It has portrayed Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona as "crusaders" who will "bring about the complete collapse of the modern American empire."

It also carries images evoking apocalyptic battles between the Sunni extremist group's fighters and the rest of the world, including American soldiers enveloped in flames.

ISIS is taking a page from the playbook of al Qaeda, a former ally that has praised and advocated terrorist attacks in its glossy magazine, Inspire.

But experts say the terrorist groups don't appear have the same propaganda goals.

Inspire focuses more on practical advice for terrorists planning attacks, publishing guides on how to make bombs and get them onto planes.

Dabiq is a vehicle intended to spark desire in its readers to join and fight with ISIS, said Seth Jones, a security analyst at the RAND Corporation.

Kurds say they killed an ISIS commander

The Kurdish fighting force known as the Peshmerga killed an ISIS commander during battle Tuesday, according to a senior Peshmerga official who took part in the operation.

The Peshmerga killed ISIS commander Abu Abdullah during a Kurdish operation to push ISIS farther from Irbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region, the official said on condition of anonymity Wednesday.

In the battle, the Peshmerga reclaimed five Iraqi villages as well as a bridge along the main highway linking Irbil to Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, according to a senior Peshmerga official taking part in the operations.

The Peshmerga said the battle was meant to push ISIS fighters back toward Mosul, to the west of Irbil -- and part of the Peshmerga's larger plan to reclaim areas that ISIS claimed this year.

ISIS destroyed the bridge linking the two cities a month ago, hoping to prevent any opposing force from advancing on Mosul, but the Peshmerga said its forces went around the bridge for Tuesday's attack.

U.S. air power appeared to play a role in the offensive. Two U.S. airstrikes targeted an armored vehicle and ISIS fighting position northwest of Irbil, according to the U.S. military. That's the same area where the Peshmerga operation was under way.

ISIS has seized large swaths of land as part of its effort to create a caliphate -- an Islamic state -- that stretches from western Syria to eastern Iraq.

Pakistan court orders first civilian execution in six years

ISLAMABAD: A judge in Pakistan has ordered a murderer to be hanged next week, officials said Friday, in what would be the country’s first civilian execution in six years.
The country has had a de facto moratorium on civilian hangings since 2008. Only one person has been executed since then, a soldier convicted by court martial and hanged in November 2012.
“A judge has passed an order that a murder convict be hanged,” an official at Adiyala Prison in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjoining Islamabad, told AFP.
“Arrangements for the execution on September 18 are being made,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Shoaib Sarwar was given the death penalty in July 1998 for murdering Awais Nawaz in January 1996. All his appeals in the high court and Supreme Court were rejected, as was a mercy petition to the president, the official said.
Sarwar is currently being held in a jail in the northwestern town of Haripur, some 25 kilometers from Islamabad, but authorities there told AFP they had not yet been informed about the execution.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it was dismayed at the news.
“HRCP wishes to remind the government that the reasons that have caused the stay of executions since 2008 have not changed,” the group said in a statement.
“These include the well-documented deficiencies of the law, flaws in administration of justice and investigation methods and chronic corruption.”
Last June the newly elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif scrapped the moratorium in a bid to crack down on criminals and Islamist militants.
But two weeks later it announced a further stay of executions after an outcry from rights groups and the then-president Asif Ali Zardari.
All execution orders in Pakistan must be signed by the president.
European Union officials indicated last year that if Pakistan resumed executions, it could jeopardize a highly prized trade deal with the bloc.
An EU rights delegation warned it would be seen as a “major setback” if Pakistan restarted hangings.
Rights campaign group Amnesty International estimates that Pakistan has more than 8,000 prisoners on death row, most of whom have exhausted the appeals process.