May 17, 2017
In mid 2012, the European intelligence and security community was confronted with a sudden outflow of citizens traveling to Syria, and later to Iraq. Quickly after its violent escalation in 2011, the Syrian uprising seemed to attract large numbers of religiously motivated combatants from all over the world. The Netherlands was no exception as the…
May 5, 2017
A version of this article was also published on Airwars. The international Coalition fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) has published dozens of videos purportedly showing airstrikes against targets of the group in Syria and Iraq through the video-sharing social medium YouTube. Bellingcat has crowdsourced the geolocation of these videos, and this article serves as an…
March 16, 2017
A’maq News Agency, a media outlet linked to the so-called Islamic State, has claimed that the United States used white phosphorous munitions in the ongoing Battle for Mosul on March 11, 2017. This claim was reiterated by two local sources, Salah al-Shorbagy and the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq, saying that white phosphorous was used in Mosul….
February 21, 2017
As the Mosul Operations slowly progress, a myriad of open-source information is emerging from both Ninawa province and other areas where intense fighting took place earlier indicating that the ongoing battle has left a disastrous environmental legacy on Iraq’s landscape. This could pose acute and chronic human health risks to Iraqi communities that are already…
January 9, 2017
This article was last updated on July 31, 2017, when a public map of all geolocated SVBIED attacks in and around Mosul was published by Twitter user @obretix. Mosul was captured by so-called Islamic State (IS) militants in June 2014. More than two years later, on October 16, 2016, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared…
December 1, 2016
ISIS have successfully adopted a little known Al-Qa’eda / Al-Nusra tactic known as Inghimasi. In a switch from the suicide bombing terrorism of the 2000’s, Inghimasiyun deliberately aim to stay alive, killing their enemies with firearms before having the option to detonate their vests when overwhelmed Evidence the tactic has been exported to North Africa…
November 4, 2016
Last update: November 5 at 16:36 UTC. A car bomb parked in a street of the Al-Hurriyah district of Baghdad killed at least eight people and wounded 30 more on October 30, 2016. At least, that’s what media reports suggested. Security camera footage that emerged three days later painted a fundamentally different picture: people prepared to…
November 1, 2016
With the first Iraqi government forces entering Mosul’s outskirts, the Battle for Mosul is entering its more messy, chaotic, and violent phase as forces will enter more densely populated areas. With up to 1.5 millions civilians still living in the Iraqi city held by so-called Islamic State (IS), officials and aid agencies have warned for…
October 19, 2016
Several international reports in April claimed IS destroyed the famous Clock Church in Mosul. The Iraqi Digital Investigation Team (IDIT) found the church is still intact. An independent investigation by the Iraqi Digital Investigation Team (IDIT) of the Berlin based organisation Media in Cooperation and Transition (MICT) has found that the Hour Church in Mosul,…
October 13, 2016
As Turkey pushes toward becoming a major player in the UAV industry, seeing more of their drones on satellite imagery beyond test airfields should come as no surprise. DigitalGlobe space snapshots from October 2015 captured one of the country’s latest drones, the Bayraktar TB2, complete with its ground control station, parked in front of an…
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