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Islamic State
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has carried out searches at five places in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra as part of its ongoing investigation to unravel a conspiracy hatched by the global terror group Islamic State to expand its activities in India, an official said on Sunday. The searches were conducted by different teams at the houses of the suspected persons at four places in Seoni (Madhya Pradesh) and one location in Pune (Maharashtra), a spokesperson of the anti-terror federal agency said. Following up on the investigational leads, the official said, NIA teams searched the houses of suspects Talha Khan in Pune and Akram Khan in Seoni in the Islamic State- Khorasan Province (ISKP) case. "This case was initially registered by Delhi Police special cell after the arrest of a Kashmiri couple - Jahanzaib Sami Wani and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh - from Okhla in Delhi. The couple was found to be affiliated with ISKP," the spokesperson said. During investigations, the role of
The death toll from an attack by the Islamic State group against an army checkpoint and people collecting truffles in central Syria has risen to at least 53, most of them civilians, state media and an opposition war monitor reported Saturday. The attack near the central town of Sukhna on Friday was the deadliest by the extremist group since so far this year, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor said. The Observatory said the attack targeted a Syrian army checkpoint and people collecting wild truffles nearby, killing 68 people, including 61 civilians. It said IS fighters reached the area on motorcycles. On Friday, it reported that the attack killed 46. The Observatory, which tracks Syria's conflict, said the IS gunmen took advantage of the Feb. 6 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria killing tens of thousands of people to carry out their deadly attack. The attention in Syria has been mostly focused on the earthquake over the past two ...
An Iranian lawmaker said Sunday that Iran's government is paying attention to the people's real demands, state media reported, a day after a top official suggested that the country's morality police whose conduct helped trigger months of protests has been shut down. The role of the morality police, which enforces veiling laws, came under scrutiny after a detainee, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, died in its custody in mid-September. Amini had been held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic's strict dress codes. Her death unleashed a wave of unrest that has grown into calls for the downfall of Iran's clerical rulers. Iran's chief prosecutor Mohamed Jafar Montazeri said on Saturday the morality police had been closed," the semi-official news agency ISNA reported. The agency did not provide details, and state media hasn't reported such a purported decision. In a report carried by ISNA on Sunday, lawmaker Nezamoddin Mousavi signalled a less confrontational approach toward the ...
Syrian authorities found a mass grave in the historic town of Palmyra with bodies of victims of the militant Islamic State group, which controlled the area years ago, Syria's state news agency said Friday. According to the report on SANA, the mass grave was discovered near the second-century Roman amphitheater. The agency said the remains of 12 people buried there have been taken to hospital morgues for identification before they can be handed over to their families. Palmyra is a UNESCO world heritage site and once linked Persia, India, China with the Roman empire and the Mediterranean area. The Islamic State militants controlled the area in two turns in 2015-2016, and killed scores of people there killings often captured in extremist propaganda videos before they were evicted. IS also damaged some of the town's famed archaeological treasures. The brutality and the actions by IS in Palmyra triggered an international outcry. Palmyra was retaken in 2017 by Syrian government forces w