South Front Crisis News 28-29 May 2015: Iraqis kill 20 ISIL fighters, ISIL kills 4 ISIL commanders, Al Qaeda orders fighters not to attack West

    

Iraqi army forces backed by fighters from the Popular Mobilization units have engaged Islamic State militants in the country's western province of Anbar, killing more than three dozen of them in the process. A provincial security sources report 37 ISIS militants were killed as Iraqi forces struck their positions in the district of al-Harariyat as well as the city of Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers west of the capital Baghdad. Earlier, On April 11, Islamic State executed four of its own senior commanders in Iraq's northern province of Salahuddin on the grounds that they had fled clashes with Iraqi government forces.

[embedded content]

The leader of al-Nusra Front — the al Qaeda-affiliate group in Syria — insisted on Wednesday that he is under orders from the organization's central leadership not to attack Western interests in Syria, but rather focus on toppling President Bashar al-Assad. "The orders from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri are we should not attack the West from Syria" Abu Mohammad al-Golani said, speaking in a television interview with the Al Jazeera Arabic-language network. Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor by training, is the current leader of al Qaeda therefore one of the most powerful terroristic organizations in the world bluntly stated its allegiance to the United States in the region. Wow!

The United States Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned China Wednesday to stop its buildup of man-made islands in the South China Sea and vowed that the U.S. military would continue to patrol international waters and airspace in the region. China asserts sovereignty over 80 percent of the sea and has been staking its claims by building large artificial islands. The United States and its Asian allies have vigorously opposed China's territorial moves. Apparently, with no one backing down, the impasse has raised the specter of a localized military conflict. On the one hand, US is trying to establish own power in the South China Sea region. On the other hand US rejects the idea of any nation claiming a sphere of influence, Vice President Joe Biden told a Washington think tank the Brookings Institution on Wednesday. Thus, the Biden denied rights on independent policy-making of any state if it state wasn't the United States.

The rise in the number of refugees in the Ukrainian conflict is resulting in one of the world's "worst humanitarian crisis" today, the UN has confirmed. The latest statistics from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees show that some 857,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum in neighboring countries, mainly Russia. That is an increase of about 23,000 people in the last two weeks. Meanwhile, Kiev's military forces are continuing to shell residential area of Donbass. Ukrainian forces violated ceasefire with artillery, battle-tanks and mortars during last 24 hours only according to the official information of Defence Ministry of Lugansk People's Republic.