This month a USA soldier was killed in Iraq participating in a Kurdish-led mission to rescue Islamic State hostages.
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The bodies of 20-year-old activist Ibrahim Abdulqader and Fares Hamadi, also in his 20s, were found in an apartment in the city of Sanliurfa, almost 60 kilometers from the Turkish border with Syria on October 30.
RBSS was the victor of this year’s worldwide Press Freedom Award, an accolade that the Committee to Protect Journalists described as an acknowledgement for the reliability and scope of its reporting.
Asked whether the use of USA special operations troops in northern Syria to coordinate with local forces was a model that would be adopted in Iraq, Carter said “we will continue to consider” this and other ways to achieve better results against the militants, who control large portions of Iraq and Syria. We lift our heads from our salmon and our table gossip and applaud those who have suffered most deeply for daring the truth. It has published detailed reports on ISIL’s systematic recruitment of child soldiers and the ban on private Internet connections, and it occasionally manages to leak images and videos of ISIL’s gruesome punishments – including public executions – to the outside world.
Washington said earlier that it could provide military support to Arab rebel commanders in northern Syria in case they cooperate with the YPG forces. Ibrahim Abd al-Qader was the executive director of RBSS as well as one of its founders.
The group anonymously films and reports on public lashings, crucifixions, beheadings and the implementation of draconian social rules by ISIL in the city, and passes them out to both local and worldwide media. Abdulqader used a real photo of himself on his Skype profile, and has given several television interviews.
Speaking over Skype and declining to disclose his location, Raqqawi said Islamic State had previously killed one of his colleagues and also the father of an administrator in Syria, posting videos of their murders online.
The group posted pictures of Qader and his friend Fares Hamadi on its official Facebook page and changed its profile picture to a black square.
Turkey has always been accused by Syrian opposition activists, Kurdish fighters and sometimes even western partners of allowing ISIL members to slip back and forth across its 911-kilometre frontier with Syria.
The city became the first provincial capital to fall from regime control in March 2013 when an array of rebel groups seized it.
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“These murders show how the grave risks journalists face in Syria have metastasised across the porous border with Turkey”.
