War

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been caught funding ISIS militants in order to advance his Middle East agenda to kill Kurds in Syria, a Turkish MP has revealed.  “Erdogan uses ISIS [Islamic State/IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL] against the Kurds. He can’t send the Turkish Army directly to Syrian Kurdistan, but he can use ISIS as an instrument against the Kurds. He has a greater Ottoman Empire in his mind, that’s his dream, while ISIS is one of the instruments [to achieve it],” Selma Irmak, a Turkish MP from the Peace and Democracy Party told the Russian media on Monday. .

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb at a police checkpoint in the southern Russian Republic of Dagestan. The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) has announced that two policemen were killed and 17 injured by a local ISIS affiliated terrorist group near Derbent. Russia Today reports: Reports say a Lada Priora approached the checkpoint and the bomb was detonated. It was later determined that a police officer pulled the driver over to check their papers. Witnesses say this is when they heard a powerful blast.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey are willing to wait for the peace process in Syria to unfold before committing to a ground invasion, with the help of a US-led coalition, according to officials. S The Independent reports: A Saudi diplomat said Sunday that Saudi Arabia was “very serious” about sending ground troops into Syria, but will first wait to see whether plans for a pause in hostilities agreed by the United States and Russia transpires.

Sources from the global chemical watchdog say Islamic State (IS) militants used sulphur mustard (mustard gas) in an attack on Iraqi Kurdish forces last year. Lab tests came back positive for the substance after Kurdish soldiers fell ill on the battlefield. The BBC reports: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was sent samples after 35 Peshmerga fighters became ill near Irbil in August. On Monday, the sources said the samples tested positive for sulphur mustard.

Saudi Arabia is to host what has been described as the “the largest and most important” military drills in the region’s history. The drills will last for 18 days with contingents from 20 countries, including Pakistan the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said. The announcement which was made on Sunday said that participating troops were to begin arriving in “the next few hours” and follows Riyadh’s warning that Syrian President Bashar Assad would be toppled.