– ISIS captures government held ground in eastern Syria
– Four injured in blast at Turkish school near Syria
– Dispute over opposition’s seat at table threatens to push back Syria peace talks
– Iraq searching for three US citizens reportedly abducted
– Battle against ISIS has turned Ramadi into a ghost town
ISIS captures government held ground in eastern Syria
Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) militants captured ground from Syrian government forces near the eastern city of Deir Ezzor on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. SOHR said there was still no update on the fate of over 400 people kidnapped when ISIS began to attack government held areas of the city on Saturday. A Syrian official said that the Syrian army repelled the attacks but ISIS is continuing the offensive. Syria’s state news agency SANA said on Sunday that at least 300 people, including women and children, had been killed during the attacks in Deir Ezzor. [Reuters, AP, AFP, 1/18/2016]
Four injured in blast at Turkish school near Syria
Turkish military radar showed that ISIS outposts inside Syria had fired on the southeastern border town of Kilis on Monday, Turkish military sources said on Monday. The army retaliated “in kind” against ISIS after the attack, which the office of the Kilis governor said had struck a school in the town. Reports indicate one staff member has died, a teenage student was critically injured and is in the hospital being treated, and two other people have been injured. Turkish authorities identified the school as Eyup Gokce Imam Middle School. One correspondent reported that, according to local officials, the rocket was fired from ISIS positions “less than 20 km away from the Syrian border … There have been previous attacks along the border, but not anything like this,” he said. “It is still unclear if the attack was an accident or on purpose.” [AP, Reuters, 1/18/2016]
Dispute over opposition’s seat at table threatens to push back Syria peace talks
Barely a month after the world’s most powerful countries agreed to an ambitious road map to end the civil war in Syria, there is still no agreement on who, if anyone, will show up at the peace talks that are to begin in Geneva next Monday. Some worry that talks will be pushed back, along with any hopes of a ceasefire. The dispute is over who represents the opposition delegation. Saudi Arabia wants its handpicked rebel bloc alone to represent the opposition to the government of President Bashar al-Assad—and it has threatened to pull its proxies out of the process if others are added to the delegation, according to UN diplomats. Russia insists on a broader opposition bloc; otherwise, it has suggested, the Syrian government would not attend. “Mutual vetoes on who should be invited,” is how one diplomat described the threats. [NYT, AP, 1/18/2016]
Iraq searching for three US citizens reportedly abducted
Security forces in Baghdad in coordination with the US Embassy are searching for three US citizens who Iraqi lawmakers said on Monday had been kidnapped. Unknown gunmen seized the trio from a private apartment on Friday in the capital’s southeastern Dora district, said Mohammed al-Karbouli, who sits on parliament’s security and defense panel. It was not immediately clear if their motives were political or criminal. Two of the three also have Iraqi citizenship, according to Iskander Witwit, the deputy head of the security and defense panel. If confirmed, this would make them the first Americans abducted in the country since US troops withdrew in 2011. [Reuters, NYT, Al Jazeera English, 1/18/2016]
Battle against ISIS has turned Ramadi into a ghost town
Iraqi officials and the coalition say hundreds of airstrikes launched on Ramadi since July played a decisive role in recapturing it. But the scorched-earth battlefield tactics used by both sides means the prize is a shattered ruin. Residents, once numbering nearly half a million, have mostly fled and now sit in refugee camps. Baghdad and Washington have touted Ramadi as the first major success for Iraq’s US-backed army since it collapsed in the face of ISIS’s lightning advance across the country’s north and west in mid-2014. [Reuters, 1/18/2016]