IS has left Iraq's Ramadi in ruins: Sky News
IS rule and weeks of fighting have left the Iraqi city of Ramadi -- the capital of the western province of Anbar -- in ruins, with no running water or electricity and every bridge destroyed, Sky News reports.
IS militants rigged up dozens of buildings, turning what look like ordinary homes where families lived into houses of horror to kill and terrorize as they please.
In a matter of months, the militants built tunnels, some of them 1km long, to pass through the city undetected by drones surveying the skies above.
Joana Cook from Kings College London's War Studies department says that British mother Tareena Shakil, whom a British court has convicted today of membership in IS, is lucky.
Shakil, who took her toddler son to IS-controlled Raqqa in Syria, managed to escape and return home -- something few women who join IS do, Cook notes.
Noah Bonsey of the International Crisis Group offers this commentary on the Syrian opposition's refusal to attend the Syria peace talks until demands to stop bombardments and blockades are met.
Saudi-backed Syrian opposition sending delegates to Geneva talks, our newsroom reports:
Syria's largest mainstream opposition group says that it will attend UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva.
However, the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee said it would only send delegates "to participate in discussions" with the United Nations, not for negotiations."
The group has been boycotting the talks until it receives guarantees on aid deliveries to besieged, opposition-held cities in Syria.
It said it would send 30 to 35 representatives to Geneva just hours after a Syrian government delegation started talks there with the UN's Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura.
Representatives of Syria's Kurdish population, which controls much of the territory in northern Syria, also were missing at the opening of the shuttle diplomacy that has been organized by De Mistura.
But reports from Geneva suggested the presence of Kurdish representatives was being discussed, and Russian authorities have said they would not object to the participation of Kurdish delegates.
The meetings began earlier on January 29 with De Mistura meeting with a Damascus delegation led by Syria's ambassador to the UN, Bashar Jaafari. (Reuters, AP, AFP, TASS, and Interfax)
This ends our live blogging for January 29. Be sure to check back for our continuing coverage of the Islamic State group.
An abridged AFP report:
Saudi authorities have arrested nine American citizens among 33 "terror" suspects rounded up over the past week, the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported Sunday.
Four Americans were arrested last Monday and five others over the past four days, the paper reported, citing an unidentified source.
Washington, a strong ally of Riyadh, confirmed it was aware of the report but declined to elaborate.
A US State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP: "We are aware of reports alleging that several US citizens were detained in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Gazette said the arrests also included 14 Saudis, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, an Emirati, a Kazakhstan national and a Palestinian.
It did not say if any of the "terror suspects" was linked to the Islamic State jihadist group, which has claimed several deadly attacks against security forces and Shiites in the kingdom since last year.
From RFE/RL's Central Newsroom:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called on the Syrian government and opposition groups to play a full role in peace talks.
Kerry made the comments in an online statement broadcast from Washington on January 31, as delegates from the Damascus regime and the opposition gathered in Geneva for UN-sponsored peace talks.
Representatives of Syria’s largest mainstream opposition group say they want to see some positive developments on the ground before entering the negotiations.
Kerry said there was "no military solution" to the crisis, which he warned could destroy what is left of Syria and leave the field open to recruiters from the Islamic State group.
Accusing President Bashar al-Assad's forces of starving civilians, he called for immediate steps to increase food aid and other humanitarian assistance to Syrians.
Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
An abridged report from AP:
The number of Syrian refugees stranded on Jordan's border and waiting for permission to enter has risen to 20,000, with 4,000 to 5,000 more arriving in the remote desert area every month, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in the kingdom said Sunday.
In recent months, Jordan has permitted only several dozen refugees to enter each day, leading to rapidly growing crowds of Syrians, including women and children, who are stuck in two areas along the Syrian-Jordanian border.
Jordanian authorities have cited security concerns for the bottle neck, saying many refugees come from areas controlled by the Islamic State group and need to undergo strict vetting. International aid officials have urged Jordan to speed up the process and move refugees quickly to the U.N.-run Azraq refugee camp which is still more than half empty and could house thousands of newcomers.
Another abridged report from AP:
One of two attackers who wore explosive belts in Friday's deadly assault on a Shiite mosque in the country's east was a 22-year-old Saudi national, Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry announced.
Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, in a statement released Saturday night, identified the suicide bomber as Abdulrahman bin Abdullah bin Suleiman al-Tuwaijri. He had been briefly detained in 2013 in the Saudi city of Buraydah during a protest to demand the release of imprisoned Saudis accused of fighting abroad and having ties to extremist groups.
Al-Tuwaijri died when he detonated his suicide vest at the entrance of the Imam Reda Mosque in al-Ahsa during Friday prayers. A second attacker was detained after an exchange of gunfire with police. He was not identified.
Al-Turki said four Saudis were killed and 33 people were wounded in the attack. Fourteen of those wounded are still receiving treatment for their injuries, he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Islamic State militants have targeted the kingdom's minority Shiites in the past.
An abridged report from AFP:
A delegation including senior US diplomat Brett McGurk met with members of a Kurd-Arab alliance fighting the Islamic State jihadist group inside Syria on Saturday, Kurdish sources said Sunday.
The visit appeared to be the first by a senior US government official inside Syrian territory.
McGurk, who is US President Barack Obama's envoy to an international coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq, was accompanied by French and British officials, the sources told AFP.
One Kurdish source close to the meeting said a "high-level military delegation from the international coalition (against IS)," met Saturday with senior members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.
The source said the talks in the Kurdish town of Kobane covered "military plans" for the fight against IS.
"These meetings will have an impact on many developments that will be seen in the area," he added, without providing further details.
The talks were confirmed by a second Kurdish source on the ground and reported in Kurdish media.
Contacted by AFP, the US State Department was not immediately able to confirm or deny the reported visit.
The SDF is an alliance of Syrian Kurds and Arabs who are fighting IS with support from the US-led coalition.
It is composed mostly of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a powerful militia that has proved Syria's most effective force against IS, along with smaller units of Syrian Arab Muslim and Christian fighters.
The meetings come after the YPG's political wing, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was excluded from new peace talks in Geneva being organised by the UN.