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JIHADIST LEADER ABU Bakr al-Baghdadi called on his fighters to resist as Iraqi forces who were poised to enter the city of Mosul today where he declared a “caliphate” two years ago.
The appeal was made in an audio recording released online and purported to be by the elusive leader of the Islamic State group, his first message this year.
“Do not retreat,” he said. “Holding your ground with honour is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame.”
“To all the people of Nineveh, especially the fighters, beware of any weakness in facing your enemy,” Baghdadi said, referring to the northern Iraqi province of which Mosul is the capital.
In June 2014, days after jihadist fighters swept across swathes of Iraq, he made a rare public appearance in Mosul and announced the creation of an Islamic “state” straddling Iraq and Syria.
The “caliphate” has been shrinking steadily since last year and Iraqi forces earlier this week reached Mosul, the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi forces, backed by the US-led coalition and its warplanes, launched a massive offensive on Mosul on 17 October.
It was not immediately possible for AFP to authenticate the recording, entitled’This is what God and his messenger have promised us’, but leading experts of the jihadist organisation did not appear to doubt it.
Sunni ‘traitors’
Rumours have abounded about the Iraqi jihadist leader’s health and movements but his whereabouts are unclear.
IS has had a tendency to fall back when massively outnumbered lately, giving up some of its emblematic bastions — such as Fallujah in Iraq and Dabiq in Syria — without following its own apocalyptic ideology of fighting to the bitter end.
In his latest message, which is undated but makes references to events that are at most a few weeks old, Baghdadi calls for attacks against Saudi Arabia — a favourite target of his — and Turkey.
Ankara has troops stationed at a base just outside Mosul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s escalating rhetoric has raised fears of a unilateral Turkish intervention in Iraq.
Baghdadi also said that his followers who could not travel to Syria or Iraq should aim for Libya and urged all IS fighters to remain united in adversity.
He attempted to stir up sectarian resentment by referring to religious flags and slogans of Shiite fighters among the Iraqi forces and by accusing the country’s Sunni politicians of treason.
The recapture of Mosul by Iraqi forces could spell the end of the group’s days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the “caliphate”.
The US-led coalition estimates the number of IS fighters holed up in Mosul at 3,000 to 5,000 and has warned the battle of Mosul could be long and difficult.
Iraqi forces advancing on Mosul from three main fronts have retaken dozens of villages and towns scattered over hundreds of square miles in just over two weeks.
Earlier this week, federal forces reached the eastern edge of Mosul and on Wednesday were clearing the most recently reconquered areas to set up a breach of the city.
Gunfire echoed across the village of Gogjali on Mosul’s eastern edge Wednesday as elite Iraqi forces worked to clear the area.
Civilians
Civilians, who emerged cautiously from their homes, some carrying white flags, told tales of IS brutality.
“They confiscated my tractor and then threw me in jail for six days. They beat me and when I got out I couldn’t do my work anymore,” Yusef Fariq said.
The 40-year-old farmer, speaking from his home in Gogjali and surrounded by his mother and two sons, still had the long beard IS militants forced him to grow.
“They were killing us, always asking for money, we couldn’t go anywhere. We went through hell,” his mother said.
The electric hair clipper a member of the Iraqi special forces gave to residents of Gogjali was the village’s most popular item as men who had been forced to grow beards by IS were finally able to shave.
With an assault on the city looking imminent, aid groups said they were “bracing for the worst” and warned that the fate of a million-plus civilians still believed trapped inside Mosul was in the balance.
They have called for corridors allowing the safe escape of civilians to be opened.
IS fighters have been rounding up residents in villages and using them as cover to move across the battlefield, prompting fears they would systematically hide behind “human shields” to defend the city.
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What??? You mean 131 didn’t work… Noooooooo!!!
Everyone is waiting for 132s
So less buy the 131′s and more buy the 132′s meaning that, overall, the same amount of cars are bought this year.
Feckin brainless spanners, the gombeens that came up with this. Didnt we all say this would happen.
*sigh*
here is an idea. Scrap VRT car sales go up.
Exactly
Which would reduce our tax base and increase the money we spend on imported goods. If you want to support an industry there are better ones to choose.
Great for people working in car factories …. Which we don’t have … I’d rather see an incentive to maintain old cars ( using labour in Ireland), than send money out buying new cars …
Daft to encourage purchase of new cars and send €6,000,000,000 out of the Irish economy every year.
Dafter to use borrowed money to do it and give the banks 9% interest in the process.
NCT was supposed to prolong the national fleet and prevent wasting money in unnecessary early replacement. Car life longevity is what “smart economies” do: USA 10 yrs avg: Sweden 10.7 yrs avg: Germany 8 yrs avg.
Do the Irish not get it?
€6 bn would create a lot of jobs if spent in the Irish economy instead of “exported”!
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http://www.CarTaxPetition.net
So, fewer people can afford new cars? Well holy jaysus. That’s a surprise!
Just a few things on car sales, As with the UK you should be able to buy a reg for your car making a 99D into a 01C and so on, Motor tax should be scraped and put on fuel with rebates to business users and taxi, haulage etc.. NCT on cars over ten years old should be from the day of the test and not this stupid system of the date of first registration making Jan- April the busiest in the test centres.
Is the VRT not illegal in accordance with EU regulations? So we cannot blame the EU for that one.
Seemingly the mobility allowance was illegal too, they were able to scrap that..
It should be noted that we don’t make cars here. Our attempts to prop up and assist the motor trade in this country is madness. We should be actively discouraging the purchase of new cars as cars are one of Germany’s biggest exports. It is one of the best ways for us PIIGS to strike back at the Germans and encourage them to give us the debt forgiveness we so desperately want.
Do u still have that passat Ciaran….
Oh my god!…and that’s coming from an agnostic. I always refrain from this question but here it goes….Are you fckin stupid?! Kill Irish jobs put of spite is your suggestion?
I do. Second hand mind so the Germans got that money off some other gorp. I did put ‘new cars’ in the comment mind. Wouldn’t have to be long term, just long enough to have the desired effect.
Who is an agnostic and what’s that got to do with the price of bread?
Yes unfortunate side effect but I think most would agree that we are sending enough money towards the German economy…
Once you go black you never go back
black the most popular colour, reflects the mood of a nation..
Goes well with everything?
And it’s slimming ;)
also don’t have to wash it as often..
why no green cars in the emerald isle? is it because they are unlucky?
Most popular colour suits well to the situation on the market…
The property tax and water charges may possibly add to that also. We should be cutting our spending instead of new taxes. This would eliminate the need to “broaden the tax base” as Noonan regularly cites.
Why would I buy a new car? It’s got 4 wheels and drives just like every other car over the last 30 years! It will cost me several g’s, most of it tax and the tax man then rips me a new one every time i fill so I can drive to work to pay his tax bill.
State backed scrappage scheme ?…. anyone? ……. modified first time home buyers grant? …. anyone? ….. guess not. …. government have a short memory. … and very limited imagination or understanding of demand side economics
It is great to see an ignorant idea fall flat on its face.
I think it’s heavily linked to how much people have to spend rather than an extra digit on the number plate. The masses have spoken when it comes to buying new cars, we can’t afford them. Also with engineering and manufacturing so good these days a car will run for years and years without needing to be changed, people know that, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The whole problem was the fascination of the numbers on the reg plate which lead people to think they needed a knew car when in fact they didn’t; wanted yes, needed, no! We are in a time of needs not wants
Volkswagen at No 1 possibly as much to do with VW have its own finance vehicle with attractive interest rates as well as a good product range … As long as banks don’t lend or lend at near credit card rates , then car sales will remain in free fall and VRT receipts reducing in line ….
Personalized number plates would have been a good idea a money spinner and at least those that could afford it would have got some joy from it . . A sort of fun tax for a Change .
good news!
We need to see a whole year’s sales data to determine if the trend in sales of new cars is up or down. The new registration system was brought in to do away with the January spike and spread sales out over the whole year (not because it’s 2013 and superstitious wouldn’t like 13 on their reg plates, as several people have suggested.) Many people will hold off till the 132 reg comes out in July. Sales are down in January and February this year compared to last, but that shortfall should be recouped in the latter part of the year.
Car industry in UK kept 13 plates,the first of which were sold today and they are selling multiples of numbers being sold here without any fuss over superstition etc.
131 and 132 reg plates have nothing to do with superstition. Next year we’ll have 141 and 142 plates, and the year after we’ll have 151 and 152 plates. There are very good reasons for it, just as the UK has a split-year registration system too. When we had one year on the reg plate, sales (and new vehicle registrations) were concentrated in the early part of the year. There is a knock-on effect of this in that most NCTs fall due earlier in the year, leading to a backlog in testing dates.
It just so happened that the new regime started in 2013, and we all assumed that it was a superstitious aversion to the number 13. It’s not. It makes sense to do this.
So they are not attaching the new number plates securely enough ???. They will take some time to catch on, an more and more of them can be seen on the road … Ummm?
You can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black
I love red in a car, my last car was a green scoda octava kept breaking down, maybe it was the colour drives a corolla now cant compare.
have your say