LATEST: Report — Wounded Kurdish Militia From Kobane Fight Being Treated in Turkey

SATURDAY FEATURE

Video: US VP Biden “Our Allies Were Our Biggest Problem. They Bolstered Extremists”

The Islamic State has executed British aid worker Alan Henning, the fourth beheading of a Western hostage in seven weeks.

Henning, a taxi driver who volunteered to help with aid convoys from Turkey into Syria, was beheaded on Friday. His murder followed his short statement and that by a masked executioner denouncing British airstrikes alongside the US in Iraq.

The message and style of the video was similar to the executions of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines.

See Syria Breaking: Islamic State Beheads British Hostage Alan Henning

Henning was seized on December 26, shortly after an aid convoy crossed the border into northwest Syria. The Islamic State had said, in the video of the murder of David Haines, that Henning would be next, and fears grew after Britain carried out its first airstrikes against the jihadists in Iraq earlier this week.

Henning’s wife had appealed for his release. She was joined by Syrian activists and Britain’s Muslim leadership.

The British Foreign Office responded, “If true, this is a further disgusting murder. We are offering the family every support possible; they ask to be left alone at this time.”

Prime Minister David Cameron, who declared on Friday that the fight against the Islamic State was similar to World War II, said that the execution showed “how barbaric and repulsive these terrorists are….We will do all we can to hunt down these murderers and bring them to justice.”

President Obama also reacted: “Standing together with our UK friends and allies, we will work to bring the perpetrators of Alan’s murder – as well as the murders of Jim Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines – to justice.”

The Islamic State is now threatening to kill Peter Kassig, shown at the end of Friday’s video.

The American, an Iraq War veteran, went to Jordan in 2012 to help in hospitals for Syrian refugees. He then launched an initiative to provide food, clothing, cooking equipment, and medical supplies to Syrians in need.

Kassig’s parents said that he was abducted in October 2013. At that time, he was carrying out relief efforts in Deir Ez Zor, the city in eastern Syria occupied by the Islamic State in the summer.


Report: Wounded Kurdish Militia From Kobane Fight Being Treated in Turkey

The Turkish newspaper Radikal reports that Wounded Kurdish fighters, holding off the Islamic State’s attack on Kobane in northern Syria, are being treated in Suruc on the Turkish side of the border.

Turkey’s Erdoğan to US VP Biden: Apologize For Blaming Us for Syria’s “Extremists”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has demanded an apology from US Vice President Joe Biden, who said on Thursday that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other states had bolstered extremists and sought a proxy Sunni-Shia war in Syria.

See Syria Video: US VP Biden “Our Allies Were Our Biggest Problem. They Bolstered Extremists”

Biden told an audience at Harvard University that Erdoğan had admitted “mistakes that paved the way for the rise of the jihadists”: “President Erdoğan told me, he is an old friend, said you were right, we let too many people through, now we are trying to seal the border.”

“If Biden told these words, then he will be history for me. I never uttered such remarks,” Erdoğan said on Saturday morning. He continued:

I was Prime Minister at the time. We absolutely didn’t provide even the smallest amount of support to any terrorist organization, including the ISIL. Nobody can prove it. Foreign fighters never crossed from Turkey to Syria. There were people coming to Turkey as tourists and went to Syria, but nobody can suggest that they were armed while crossing the border….

I never admitted any mistake nor did we told them that they “were right” during my visit to the US, If Mr. Biden uttered these remarks at Harvard, he should apologize. I’m telling this clearly. And we won’t accept slender, indirect explanations.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu also chided Biden:

It is impossible to accept his criticism. All the U.S. authorities and Biden very well know that Turkey, on its own, has hosted millions of refugees for four years. If all the warnings that Turkey made had been taken into consideration, [the Islamic State] would not be an issue today.

Turkish Forces Use Tear Gas to Stop Group Trying to Help Besieged Kobane

Turkish security forces have used tear gas against a group of people trying to cross into northern Syria and help in the defense of the Kurdish center of Kobane against the attacks of the Islamic State.

Saturday’s clash was in Suruç, across the border from Kobane. As a few members of the group managed to cross the border, security forces fired tear gas cartridges while protesters pelted military vehicles with stones.

Security forces have pushed journalists back from the border:

Demonstration on the Turkish side of the border:

KOBANE BORDER DEMO

Islamic State jihadists have been closing on Kobane, the capital of one of the three Syrian Kurdish cantons, since mid-September.

Video: The American Who Joined Kurdish Forces To Fight the Islamic State

An interview with Jordan Matson — former US soldier and construction worker — who has joined the Kurdish militia YPG as they fight the Islamic State in northern Syria:

I wanted to come join [the YPG] because I got sick of watching so many of these people get killed as Da’esh [the Islamic State] grew, and my country doing nothing about it.

US Officials: Our Missile Attacks on “Khorasan Group” Failed

US officials have said that their missile attacks on the mysterious “Khorasan Group” — a faction supposedly located amid insurgents in northern Syria and planning terrorist operations against the US — have failed.

In the first wave of US airstrikes inside Syria on September 23, at least 25 Tomahawk missiles were fired on two locations of the Islamist insurgent faction Jabhat al-Nusra in Aleppo and Idlib Provinces. At least 60 Jabhat al-Nusra fighters and at least 14 civilians were killed.

Three U.S. officials said indications are that “many suspected leaders and members of the Khorasan Group” escaped, taking high-tech explosive devices for attacks on civil aviation or similar targets.

“They thought people were there but they were not there,” said one U.S. official.

Opposition and insurgent sources have raised doubts about the US operations, claiming that the real objective was to weaken Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a “terrorist organization” by Washington. Experts on jihad and terrorism have said that they had never heard of a “Khorasan Group” before it was publicly declared by US intelligence agencies in mid-September.

See Syria Special: How the US Lost Its War Within Hours

Earlier this week, documents supported those claims. They indicated that foreign fighters, whom the US said were part of the Khorasan Group, were in fact a sniper unit with Jabhat al-Nusra.

Still, the US officials insisted that Khorasan members are “likely still actively planning attacks”. They blamed the failure on the missile attacks on “news leaks” that tipped off the group and allowed it to escape the targeted area.

Conflicting Reports Over Battle for Last Main Road Supplying Insurgents in Aleppo

Regime and opposition activists are putting out conflicting reports over the state of a battle for a key road north of Aleppo.

On Friday, regime supporters claimed that the Syrian military was on the verge of taking the road near Handarat (see map). If successful, the attack would cut the last main route to supply insurgents who hold the eastern part of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

However, opposition activists circulated video that purported to show an insurgent victory at al-Millah, just west of Handarat (see map), with fighters walking past the bodies of slain regime troops:

Claimed footage of withdrawal of Syrian forces from al-Millah: