June 15, 2014

US evacuates Baghdad embassy as brutal ISIS Kills Dozens of Captured Troops


The soldiers are executed where they lie in a shallow ditch
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT: Some 5,500 people work in the massive Embassy complex in the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Many will be airlifted to Amman, Jordan, and others will be sent to consulates in Basra, in the south, and Erbil, in the Kurdish north. Many American contractors, such as those training Iraq's military and police forces, have already pulled their personnel out of the country. Pictures posted on a militant website appear to show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) slaughtering dozens of captured troops. Captions say the killings were to avenge the death of ISIS commander Abdul-Rahman al-Beilawy, the Associated Press reported. Al-Beilawy's death was reported by ISIS and the Iraqi government shortly before the Islamist group seized control of Mosul, Iraq's second city, and Tikrit, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, in a lightning offensive.
A map of northern Iraq shows the towns and cities taken over by Sunni insurgents and Kurdish Peshmerga