Iran’s Health Minister in Mecca to track status of injured pilgrims

The Iranian Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education Seyed Hassan Hashemi arrived in Mecca earlier today to track the status of the injured pilgrims in Mina disaster.

The official entered Mecca today morning to investigate the latest status of Iranian injured and missing pilgrims in Mina Tragedy.

Indeed, Iran had planned to send a delegation to Saudi Arabia immediately after the incident but Saudi government refused to issue a visa for Iranian political figures.

Meanwhile, having the visa, Iran’s health minister was scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday noon but his trip was postponed due to delay in issuance of flight permit by Saudis.

Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi said that, “during his trip to Mecca, Hashemi plans to meet and talk to some Saudi officials to address the situation of Iranian pilgrims who were affected by the Mina incident, particularly those who are missing.”

According to the latest statistics, 226 Iranian pilgrims have been confirmed dead so far in Mina tragedy, 28 others injured while 248 others are still unaccounted for.

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Photos: VIP pilgrims just could be safe in Hajj!

Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed in protest at Hajj stampede

Traders in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed their shops on Tuesday morning in protest against Hajj stampede.

Releasing a statement on Tuesday, the merchants’ unions announced the merchants’ closure of their shops to show their resentment to Saudi Arabia over its incompetence and mismanagement of Hajj rituals.

The death toll of the Iranian pilgrims reached 227, Head of Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, Saeed Ohadi announced Tuesday.

Ohadi said the numbers of injured and missing Iranian pilgrims are 27 and 247 respectively. The Hajj stampede happened in Mina, a neighborhood of Mecca, on Thursday while the pilgrims were taking part in the stoning the devil ritual.

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France: Objections raised over discriminatory discs for Muslim students

A French school is under investigation after Muslim and Jewish pupils were told to wear red discs around their necks at lunchtime, sparking parents’ outrage.

“It’s revolting. It reminds you of the darkest times,” a local councillor, Malika Ounès, told The Telegraph.
“Practices like this are not acceptable. No one has the right to impose this on children.”

The dilemma started when Piedalloues primary school in Auxerre, in Burgundy, gave red discs to non-pork eating pupils, basically Muslims.

Eighteen of the school’s 1,500 pupils were made to wear the discs.

The discs were withdrawn after protests by angry parents and community leaders.

It was “an isolated, clumsy and unfortunate initiative” that lasted only one day,” Christian Sautier, director of communications in the mayor’s office, said.

He said it had been put into effect by canteen staff without informing local authorities, who ended it immediately.

“When we learned about it, we fell out of our chairs,” Sautier said, adding that the mayor had ordered an investigation.

Muslim students school meals has always been a thorny issue in France.

Last August, a court upheld a local move to stop offering non-pork meals to students in school cafeterias, possibly setting a precedent for municipalities elsewhere in the country.

The court ruled in favor of the Republican mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône who announced in March that students would no longer be guaranteed a non-pork option at lunchtime for the coming school year.

In March, the former centre-Right president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said he too opposed pork-free options in schools.

France is home to a Muslim community of nearly six million, the largest in Europe.

French Muslims have been complaining of restrictions on performing their religious practices.

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Coach Crash near Mecca Seriously Injures Blackburn Pilgrims

A coach carrying passengers from Blackburn, Britain, crashed in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia.


Australian ISIL Terrorists in Iraq and Syria Doubled within Last Year: FM

The number of Australians fighting for the ISIL terrorist group in Syria and Iraq doubled in the past year but was not expected to continue to grow so rapidly, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.

Australia has been increasingly concerned about the ability of ISIL, also known as Daesh, to lure citizens to the conflict and at least 20 nationals are believed to have died there.

“We estimate that there are around 120 Australians currently in Iraq and Syria supporting Daesh and other terrorist groups,” Bishop told reporters in New York.

“That is double the number that I reported here 12 months ago.”

Bishop said estimates were that 30,000 foreigners from at least 100 countries had joined ISIL.

“Our numbers have doubled since last year but I don’t expect it to double again by next year,” she said from New York where she has been attending the United Nations General Assembly.

“We are having some success in interrupting the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, but I wouldn’t say we have yet turned the tide.”

Australia raised its terror threat level to high a year ago and since then has introduced new national security laws and conducted counter-terrorism raids amid concerns about radicalisation.

Canberra has also cancelled passports and prevented a number of people from leaving the country on fears they were heading to the Middle East to join ISIL.

“So the numbers are still increasing but we hope to stem the trajectory through our efforts,” Bishop told Australian media.

The Australian minister said the government was also concerned about convicted terrorists who are being released from jails in Asia, including in Indonesia, and the risks they posed if not rehabilitated.

“It is also a concern that we have that this kind of perverted ideology could be spread within the prison system as it has been in other countries,” Bishop said.

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Yazidi Slave Reveals: American Jihadi is ‘Top ISIS Commander’

A Yazidi slave girl has claimed the high-ranking ISIS commander who held her prisoner was a white American who directed the terror group’s attacks and received personal letters from its leader.

Nada, 19, told MailOnline that US citizen Abu Abdullah al-Amriki (the American), 23, boasted about how beautiful women from all over the world wanted to join him in Syria and that he always kept a vial of poison on him – in case he was captured in battle.

She was bought by the ISIS emir – or local leader – at a slave auction in Islamic State’s de-facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, in October.

 

The tall, pale man with black hair and short beard bought nine girls in total but sold seven of them on.

Nada was taken to one of his ‘many’ heavily-guarded houses in Manbij, Aleppo, where she lived with the other Yazidi girl and her son.

The teenager, who is now in America, told her harrowing story to the US government after escaping with her captor’s phone. Her fellow Yazidi hostage, known as ‘Bazi’, is also in the country – she will give evidence against Abu Abdullah to Congress and wants the FBI to press charges against him.

MailOnline cannot independently verify these claims and Nada said she has never seen his picture before on videos or images released by ISIS.

She said Abu Abdullah was a very important figure in Islamic State and a stream of armed balaclava-clad militants from all nationalities visited the house.

She said:  ‘Many guests were coming and he was always explaining things to them. He was drawing maps of the fighting. He was telling everyone how to fight, about how to make an ambush. 

‘He was always ordering people to move and how to make a plan. He always carried a pistol and an AK47. 

‘There were also sniper rifles in the house, lying around. He also carried a policeman’s stick which he used to beat me and the boy [another prisoner] with. He also slapped the boy.

‘They didn’t let me enter the room when they were talking. They only let me enter the room when they were talking tea to them.’

Nada described the wiry commander, who spoke Arabic badly, as a ‘nervous’ man who doused himself in strong perfume and yelled at her constantly.

He was so frightened of being captured that he always kept a vial of poison in his pocket, so he could commit suicide if  his enemies ever took him alive.

One group of four men – who were always masked – visited Abu Abdullah regularly to bring him letters from ISIS’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said the woman.

Nada said: ‘If Abu Abdullah was not at home, I’d have to sign for it. I was just receiving it and putting it in his room.

‘The mail contained letters and the envelope was from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The masked man who brought the mail from al-Baghdadi talked in English.

Abu Abdullah, who converted to Islam around four years ago and has many different identities, told Nada that he regularly travels to the United States to see his family, but there is no way to verify his sensational boast.

She said: ‘He showed me pictures of his family – he had a girl and a boy. He said his family were not around, that they were far away.’

Nada was captured in the northern Iraqi city of Tal-Afar, around 32 miles from Sinjar, in around August 2014.

The terror group abducted more than 500 Yazidi women and young girls and slaughtered 5,000 as its fighters stormed through the region.

ISIS views Yazidis, whose religion includes elements of Christianity and Islam, as ‘devil-worshippers’.

The extremists take the females as their personal sex slaves and execute the men who do not convert to their twisted brand of Islam.

The teenager was taken to Manbij, a north-Syrian town which earned the nickname ‘little London’ because of the high numbers of British jihadists who live there.

Manchester twins Salma and Zahra Halane, 17, are thought to live in the town where English and German are commonly spoken.

Danish charity worker Ahmad Walid Rashidi, who was held captive in Manbij for over a month, met a blue-eyed British fighter in its police station.

He told the Sunday Times: ‘It’s like a little London or a little Berlin. Manbij is definitely the most foreign-influenced place in Syria.’

Rashidi, 23, said foreign fighters were paid around £20 a month and received free food and medicine, while jihadi brides got a £2 allowance.

During Nada’s 20-day captivity, the American jihadi also showed her pictures and footage of American girls who he claimed were coming to Syria to join ISIS.

She said: ‘There were beautiful girls or women from everywhere, from every country – he showed me them.

‘He said: “They are free and they want to come and join us, so why is it that you want to leave? Why do you want to run away? This is a good country.”

‘Abu Abdullah told me that I and the other girl will have a long life with him as servants – and our children will grow up to be jihadis like them.’

The ‘other girl’ was a Yazidi known only as Bazi, 20, who was held hostage alongside Nada after she was abducted during the ISIS assault on Sinjar in August 2014.

Bazi told CNN that Abu Abdullah would pray and wash himself before he raped her and how she pleaded with him not to touch Nada.

She said: ‘The first time he raped me, he tried to rape the other girl who was with me but I told him since I felt I’m already raped, I don’t want the other one [to be raped].

‘So I became responsible for the other one. I told him to treat her as a servant for him, because he was sheikh, an emir, so he would just have her as a servant. I convinced him the whole time until we were able to escape from his house.’

Bazi’s physical description of Abu Abdullah matched Nada’s and she also claims he told her about visiting his family in America but, again, the claims cannot be independently confirmed.

The American terrorist and his ‘team of bodyguards’ beat them after each of their five failed escape attempts. He once prevented Bazi from seeing her son for an entire week, Nada told MailOnline.

One day, when Abu Abdullah and his guards went to battle in northern Iraq, Nada stole his phone and ran to another house in Manbij.

She said: ‘When they were away fighting in Kobani, me and the other girl broke the door and left with the boy.’

They kept a low profile until the Assayish – police from the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) – came to rescue her.

She gave Abu Abdullah’s phone to the KRG, who interviewed her and took her to a refugee camp in northern Iraq.

Here, she was interviewed by US government officials who visited the settlement and showed her pictures of another American jihadi who went by the nom-de-guerre, Abu Zeyd.

She said: I recognized it. Abu Zeyd was a beautiful man – he had long blond hair, and no facial hair. But I don’t know who he is. They had no pictures of Abu Abdullah.’

Traumatised, Nada struggled to speak for around 10 days after reaching the relative safety of the camp.

She eventually got in touch with a man inside ISIS territory, who smuggles Yazidis out for money, to see if he could help her brother who was still a prisoner.

Her contact told her that Abu Abdullah is still alive.

Nada is one of hundreds of women and young girls who have escaped from Islamic State’s clutches, only to tell of how they endured unimaginable cruelty and sexual abuse.

In May, a 17-year-old Yazidi girl described how she and her little sister were raped daily by a depraved jihadist before they were both sold at a ‘slave auction’ in Syria.

An even younger Yazidi girl known only as Bahar, 14, once told of how she was forced to undergo medical exams to ‘prove’ her virginity before she was sold to ISIS fighters in another twisted auction.

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Poll: Bashar Assad Wins the Title of ‘Historical Arab Leader’

Asking thousands of fans on her facebook page who deserves to win the title of the historical Arab leader, Mahra saw an astonishingly large number of visitors on her page in the first few minutes.

Some 54.7% of those who took part in the polling voted in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor, saying he deserves to be called the historical leader of the Arab world.

The voters also wrote in their comments on Mahra’s facebook post that Assad deserves the title since he managed to stand against a rising tide of terrorists entering his country with the help of the army despite the hard siege that the world attempted to lay on him and his nation.

This is while other Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and former head of the UAE Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, could just win 3 votes.

The conflict in Syria, which started in March 2011, has reportedly claimed more than 240,000 lives up until now.

The US and its allies including France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are known as the major supporters of the militants fighting Syria’s government forces.

This is while many regional and western officials have eventually come to the conclusion that settling the crisis in Syria without President Assad is impossible.

In relevant remarks on Saturday, Australia’s foreign minister called for a political solution to the foreign-backed militancy in Syria, stressing the need for a national unity government involving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In an interview with English-language broadsheet newspaper the Australian published on Saturday, Julie Bishop said there is an emerging consensus that the incumbent Damascus government would likely have a pivotal role in fortifying the Syrian state and stopping the ISIL Takfiri militant group from gaining ground.

“It is evident there must be a political as well as a military solution to the conflict in Syria,” the top Australian diplomat said, noting that Canberra would play its part in achieving such an objective.

“There is an emerging view in some quarters that the only conceivable option would be a national unity government involving President Assad,” Bishop pointed out.

Bishop’s comments come as German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on September 24 that any talks on ending the conflict in Syria should involve Assad.

“We have to speak with many actors, this includes Assad, but others as well. Not only with the United States of America, Russia, but with important regional partners, Iran, and Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia,” she told a press conference in Brussels.

On September 22, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French-language daily Le Figaro that a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis is impossible without the country’s president.

“If we require, even before negotiations start, that Assad step down, we won’t get far,” Fabius underlined.

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Yemeni Forces Take Control of Saudi Post, Village in Jizan

The Yemeni forces took control of the Saudi military post of Ka’b al-Jaberi and the village of Mohannad in Jizan, leaving a group of Saudi soldiers dead and injured.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry said that a member of the ministry was killed by a mortar shell fired from Northern Yemen on the border between the two countries.

“Military shells fired from the Yemeni territory killed Ali Bin Fahad Abu Mahasen, a member of the mujahideen administration branch in Jizan region,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for 188 days now to restore power to Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 6,469 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Hadi stepped down in January and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by Ansarullah revolutionaries of the Houthi movement.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

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Iran’s Rouhani: Acceptance among major powers that Syrian leader Assad remain in power

Ahlul Bayt News Agency – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said he saw a widespread acceptance among major powers that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad should stay in office.

“I think today everyone has accepted that President Assad must remain so that we can combat the terrorists,” Rouhani told CNN.

“In Syria, when our first objective is to drive out terrorists and combating terrorists to defeat them, we have no solution other than to strengthen the central authority and the central government of that country as a central seat of power,” said Mr Rouhani, who is visiting New York for the UN General Assembly.

Iran has voiced concern over a future without Assad. But Mr Rouhani said he also saw a future role for opponents of Assad.

“As soon as this government reaches the various levels of success and starts driving out the terrorists on a step-by-step basis, then other plans must be put into action so as to hear the voices of the opposition as well,” Mr Rouhani said.

Meanwhile Mr Rouhani said that Iran was not in direct talks about Syria with the United States.

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