Islamic State of Iraq

A Frenchman has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for seeking to recruit dozens of youths to fight as jihadists in Syria and for leading a brigade of French-speaking Islamists in the war-torn country.
Mourad Fares, 35, fled Syria in 2014, and was arrested in Turkey and handed over to French authorities the same year.

The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on Muslims to wage "jihad" in a purported new audio recording released on Aug. 22.

An Iraqi court has sentenced a Turkish woman to death by hanging for joining the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), Reuters reported, citing a statement taken out by the spokesman for the criminal court in Baghdad on Feb. 19. 

An Iraqi interior ministry official said Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive and being treated at a field hospital in Syria after being wounded in an air strike.

Rebuilding Iraq after three years of war with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) will cost $88.2 billion, with housing a particularly urgent priority, Iraqi officials told an international conference yesterday.

American troops have started to draw down from Iraq following Baghdad’s declaration of victory over Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISL) last year, according to Western contractors at a U.S.-led coalition base in Iraq.

At least 50 people died in a suicide attacks in a southern Iraqi city on Sept. 14, with more than 80 wounded, a health official and police sources said.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Iraqi forces are carrying out air strikes on Tal Afar, a town held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) west of Mosul, in preparation for a ground assault, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Aug. 15.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is still alive and hiding in Syria, despite Russian reports of his death, Iraqi and Kurdish counter-terrorism officials have said, quoted by The Telegraph.co.uk.

Iraqi counterterrorism units reported on July 15 that they had detained 20 female Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, including three Turkish citizens, captured in a secret tunnel discovered under the Old City neighborhood of Quleiat in Mosul.