shameless USA stole Putin's victory claim to yah-yah @ ISIS

[nkfnkfnkf]

http://www.straitstimes.com/world/m...y-warns-isis-that-its-days-are-numbered-after



US Secretary of State John Kerry warns ISIS that its 'days are numbered' after 'Jihadi John' hit

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks on the US strategy in Syria during an address at the United States Institute of Peace.PHOTO: AFP
PUBLISHED1 HOUR AGO
19
TUNIS (AFP) - United States Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday (Nov 13) warned the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that its "days are numbered", following an American strike in Syria targeting British militant "Jihadi John".

"The coalition forces conducted an air strike targeting... Jihadi John," whose real name is Mohammed Emwazi, he said on a visit to Tunis.

"We are still assessing the results of this strike but the terrorists associated with Daesh need to know this: Your days are numbered and you will defeated," said Mr Kerry, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.



"There is no future, no path forward" for ISIS, the secretary of state said.

The Pentagon said the US military conducted an air strike Thursday targeting Emwazi, the masked ISIS militant with a British accent seen in grisly videos executing Western hostages.

"We are assessing the results... and will provide additional information as and where appropriate," said spokesman Peter Cook.

The Pentagon said the air strike took place in Raqqa, the ISIS's de facto Syrian capital.

CNN and the Washington Post, citing officials, reported that Emwazi was targeted by a drone.

The US strike on Syria that targeted British "Jihadi John" was "an act of self defence", Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said on Friday, while acknowledging his death was "not yet certain".

Mr Cameron said the operation against Mohammed Emwazi, who appears in a string of graphic videos showing the execution of Western hostages, was a combined British-US effort.

"We cannot yet be certain if the strike was successful," Mr Cameron said in a statement delivered outside his Downing Street office.

If it was confirmed, it would be "a strike at the heart of ISIL," he said, using an alternative term for ISIS.

But analysts said the impact of his death would likely be symbolic rather than tactical for the group, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and is known for perpetrating widespread atrocities.

"Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages," the Pentagon said.

CNN and the Washington Post, citing officials, said Emwazi was targeted by a drone. He was last seen in the video showing Mr Goto's execution in January.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said four people were killed in a strike in Raqa late on Thursday.

"The car was hit in the centre of town, near the municipality building," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said, quoting sources who said one of the victims was a "senior British member of the group".

Emwazi, a London computer programmer, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed.

Mr Charlie Winter, an academic who focuses on ISIS activities, said it could be a "big blow".

"Symbolically it's really important. Jihadi John... was someone who was a source of hubris, a sort of an aspirational figure for fighters in Islamic State," he said.

"He was a key figure of defiance in the face of the international coalition, so if in fact he has been killed, this is going to be a big blow."

Court papers published by British media connected Emwazi to a network of extremists known as "The London Boys" that were originally trained by the Shebab, Al-Qaeda's East Africa affiliate.

 

[JihadiJohn]

Lanjiao understand! I am still alive and posting! :oIo:

 

[JihadiJohn]

How we finally got Jihadi John: GCHQ helped spot him in June, drones followed him for weeks... then 1,000mph missile slammed into his car

• Intelligence sources located Jihadi John six months ago and have been following him around the clock
• A Reaper drone piloted at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada circled Jihadi John on Thursday night in Raqqa
• Once identified getting into his car, the pilot fired a HellFire Missile which completely destroyed the vehicle
• It is understood that special forces operatives may have even infiltrated the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa
  

By Guy Walters for the Daily Mail
Published: 16:57 GMT, 13 November 2015 | Updated: 00:06 GMT, 14 November 2015

For obvious security reasons, neither the Ministry of Defence nor the Pentagon have revealed precisely how Jihadi John was tracked down and killed.

But it is possible to assemble the likely sequence of events by drawing on intelligence sources, the scant details we have been given – and from the experience of previous drone strikes.

After this sinister masked figure first appeared on YouTube in August last year, British and US intelligence services were straight on his trail, crucially helped by voice-tagging technology.

Mohammed Emwazi was blitzed by a missile fired from a drone controlled by U.S. air force pilots sitting in a control centre thousands of miles away. A U.S. official said the ISIS executioner was pinpointed in the centre of the terror group's capital Raqqa after 'persistent surveillance'

This annotated image posted online by anti-ISIS activists Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently claims to show where Emwazi is believed to have been killed (circled), just yards from the group's headquarters in Raqqa

Used previously to good effect in Afghanistan, the technology meant that staff at the Government’s GCHQ spy agency in Cheltenham could analyse voice-recordings collected by Nimrod spy planes.

They can create individual voice profiles of terrorists, in the same way as police use fingerprints.

Confirmation that Jihadi John had been found was finally made by ‘other means’ – most likely an informant.

Next, in intelligence jargon, came ‘Find – Fix – Finish’.

As well as using CIA and MI6 spies in Syria, it is believed that heavily-disguised special forces, such as the SAS, will have infiltrated Islamic State strongholds including Raqqa.

Such ground-level intelligence is known as ‘humint’ – short for human intelligence – but electronic intelligence or ‘elint’ is a far more powerful weapon in their armoury.

This includes the interception of suspects’ mobile phone calls through the use of drones, spy planes and satellites.

The Reaper drone is thought to have taken off from Incirilik Air Force base in southern Turkey, around 200 miles from the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa

The British ISIS militant, whose real name is Mohammed Emwazi, carried out a number of beheadings of Western hostages in Syria. He is believed to have been killed in a U.S drone strike

Former drone pilot John Reed spent six years spying and attacking Islamist extremists in Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria has told of how people would crowd around his screen if a high profile militant was being targeted (file photo)

Staff at the UK military intelligence base at Ayios Nikolaos, Cyprus, can also sweep up complex communications ‘chatter’.

Terrorist targets will try to keep one step ahead of their pursuers: they may not use mobile phones as SIM cards can be tracked, neither will they connect their phones or computers to the internet in an attempt to prevent their UK and US watchers following their IP address, which is automatically recognised by servers.

Instead they use encrypted instant messages – although it is believed GCHQ can decode these, too.

But however it happened, Jihadi John was finally located in June. He would then have been constantly followed by British or US unmanned drones operated by crew at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire – 2,250 miles from Raqqa – or American pilots at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, 7,200 miles away.

Over weeks, drone pilots will ‘fix’ intimate knowledge of their target – such as watching them visiting a mosque, seeing friends and shopping – to establish their routine and to identify a location where they can be taken out with little or no collateral damage.

The fliers, as well as being able to launch drones carrying Hellfire missiles, also have in their possession pre-prepared legal clearance to kill high-value targets – since approval to strike cannot always be obtained from David Cameron or President Obama at a moment’s notice. Jihadi John was watched in August as he travelled in a convoy which included women and children; in such circumstances, a drone strike would not have been wise.

This week, he was finally tracked to Raqqa by GCHQ staff who picked up chatter among IS militants.

Symbolic: Anti-ISIS activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said Emwazi was thought to have been hit near a clock tower (above) in the city centre where ISIS has carried a number of public executions

Raffaello Pantucci, the director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute – a defence and security forum – said the strike could only have happened using 'local' intelligence

Drones circling above the terrorists’ stronghold would then have been despatched to find his exact location by picking up his voice.

On Wednesday they found him.

With such a high-profile target, it is likely the British and US governments wanted ‘eyes-on’ confirmation, perhaps from SAS observers. Once established, his location would have been passed to the US pilots at Creech – for the Finish.

Throughout Thursday, Jihadi John was watched by drones 50,000ft above as operators waited until they could kill him ‘safely’.

At 11.40pm he was seen emerging from a building in central Raqqa and getting into a car with three more IS terrorists.

At that point, one pilot would have clicked a mouse or control stick trigger to ‘paint’ the target vehicle with a laser, which is used by Hellfire missiles to lock on the target.

Then with either a keyboard command or another click of a mouse, transmitted via satellite, the Hellfire would have been launched.

The next 20 seconds would have been tense, as the US pilots waited for it to strike...

Success! The car was struck – with some poetic justice, near an Islamic court and the clock tower location of IS crucifixions.

A Pentagon official confirmed yesterday: ‘We have been following this target for some time.

‘And when the opportunity presented itself for minimal civilian casualties, we took the shot.’ The explosion, visible on United States Air Force screens in Nevada, would not have been the end of the mission for the drone’s operators.

They had to keep the craft circling above Raqqa, performing Battle Damage Assessment to check the target was ‘Finished’.

It is understood they watched Jihadi John being taken to hospital, where he is thought to have died.

The last word goes to that Pentagon official, who said clinically: ‘We’ve got several methods to determine whether or not the strike successfully killed the target that we wanted killed.

‘We know for a fact that the weapons system hit the intended target and that the personnel on the receiving end were killed by that.’

A video released by the terror group shows a man being crucified near the clock tower in the centre of Raqqa

The unmanned drone, which is thought to have been piloted from 7,000 miles away from the Creech Air Force base (file photo), Nevada, has the advantage of being able to locate and monitor targets while airstrikes are planned

 

[virus]

Islamic State leader in Libya 'killed in US airstrike'

Pentagon says strike’s target was Iraqi national and al-Qaida operative
US airstrike was country’s first against Isis in Libya, Pentagon notes

A US military airstrike has killed the Islamic State’s leader in Libya, the Pentagon said on Saturday. The target of the strike was named as “Abu Nabil, aka Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al Zubaydi, an Iraqi national who was a long-time al-Qaida operative”.

The Pentagon said Nabil’s death “will degrade [Isis’s] ability to meet the group’s objectives in Libya”.
The news followed the suicide bomb and shooting attacks in Paris on Friday night in which, the Paris prosecutor said later on Saturday, 129 people were killed and 352 injured, 99 of them critically.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, and a White House statement said a National Security Council briefing of President Obama “had no information to contradict the initial French assessment of [Isis] responsibility”.

In a statement on the airstrike, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said: “This operation was authorised and initiated prior to the terrorist attack in Paris.”

Cook’s statement said: “On 13 November [Friday], the US military conducted an airstrike in Libya against Abu Nabil, [also known as] Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al Zubaydi, an Iraqi national who was a long-time al-Qaida operative and the senior [Isis] leader in Libya.”

The statement said Nabil had been killed in the strike, which US officials told Reuters was carried out by two F-15 aircraft.

“Reporting suggests [Nabil] may also have been the spokesman in the February 2015 Coptic Christian execution video,” the statement continued, referring to a video which showed the beheading of 21 Copts, most of them Egyptian, and prompted international outrage. Egypt bombed the city of Sirte, Libya, where the executions took place.

“Nabil’s death will degrade [Isis’s] ability to meet the group’s objectives in Libya,” Cook continued, “including recruiting new [Isis] members, establishing bases in Libya, and planning external attacks on the United States.

“While not the first US strike against terrorists in Libya, this is the first US strike against an [Isis] leader in Libya and it demonstrates we will go after [Isis] leaders wherever they operate.”

The US military has also said it is “reasonably confident” that a Hellfire missile fired from a drone over the Syrian city of Raqqa on Thursday killed Mohammed Emwazi, the British man who came to be known as Jihadi John and who was filmed murdering a number of hostages held by Isis.
US 'reasonably certain' it has killed 'Jihadi John' – as it happened
Follow the latest updates after the US carried out a drone strike in Syria targeting Mohammed Emwazi, the British Isis terrorist referred to as ‘Jihadi John’
Read more

Four years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, Isis has steadily grown in Libya, controlling Sirte. For the past week, residents there and in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, have reported US drones and spy planes orbiting above.

Sirte, birthplace of Gaddafi, has become the springboard for Isis raids into the Sirte Basin, home of Libya’s largest concentration of oil fields. Five oil workers from an Austrian company kidnapped in the area in March remain missing and most production is at a standstill.

Friday’s strike was the first use of US jets in Libya since June 2014, when F-15s struck what the Pentagon said was a gathering of senior al-Qaida leaders from across north Africa in Ajdabiya, near the eastern city of Benghazi.

Washington has grown concerned that Libya has become a “third front” for Isis, with terror experts saying the group is trying to replicate its success in Iraq and Syria in smuggling oil to raise finance.

The group has taken advantage of the chaos of Libya’s ongoing civil war, in which rival governments based in Tripoli and the eastern town of Tobruk have been fighting each other for the past year.

Concern about Isis in Libya has grown in Egypt and Tunisia. Tunisia says the suicide attacker who killed 38 tourists, 30 of them British, in Sousse in June was trained in Libya’s western Isis base, outside Sabratha.

The airstrikes may have been prompted by the recent collapse of United Nations peace talks intended to end the civil war, amid concern that with the country’s chaos set to continue, Isis will expand into the vacuum.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/14/us-airstrike-isis-leader-libya

 

[virus]

Court papers published by British ...managed by CIA, these r 2 separate operations