🏴🇮🇶 On Kurdish Jihadis within HTS ranks: Estimates indicate that the number of Kurdish militants within Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria may exceed 3,000, originating from Kurdish populations across the region.
Reports suggest that the largest contingent is likely from Turkey, with a particularly notable concentration from the city of Bingöl, where over 600 individuals reportedly joined Jabhat al-Nusra (the predecessor of HTS) during its early formation.
Other fighters primarily consist of Kurdish militants from Iran and Iraq, while only a smaller fraction are believed to be Syrian Kurds.
One prominent Kurdish militant group active in Idlib province, HTS’s main stronghold during the Syrian conflict, was Ansar al-Islam—an Iraq-based Kurdish Salafi-jihadist organization.
Pictured: Ansar al-Islam fighters during a training session in Idlib in 2019.
🏴🇮🇶 On Kurdish Jihadis within HTS ranks: Estimates indicate that the number of Kurdish militants within Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria may exceed 3,000, originating from Kurdish populations across the region.
Reports suggest that the largest contingent is likely from Turkey, with a particularly notable concentration from the city of Bingöl, where over 600 individuals reportedly joined Jabhat al-Nusra (the predecessor of HTS) during its early formation.
Other fighters primarily consist of Kurdish militants from Iran and Iraq, while only a smaller fraction are believed to be Syrian Kurds.
One prominent Kurdish militant group active in Idlib province, HTS’s main stronghold during the Syrian conflict, was Ansar al-Islam—an Iraq-based Kurdish Salafi-jihadist organization.
Pictured: Ansar al-Islam fighters during a training session in Idlib in 2019.
Artem Kliuchnikov and his family fled Ukraine just days before the Russian invasion. At its heart, Telegram is little more than a messaging app like WhatsApp or Signal. But it also offers open channels that enable a single user, or a group of users, to communicate with large numbers in a method similar to a Twitter account. This has proven to be both a blessing and a curse for Telegram and its users, since these channels can be used for both good and ill. Right now, as Wired reports, the app is a key way for Ukrainians to receive updates from the government during the invasion. DFR Lab sent the image through Microsoft Azure's Face Verification program and found that it was "highly unlikely" that the person in the second photo was the same as the first woman. The fact-checker Logically AI also found the claim to be false. The woman, Olena Kurilo, was also captured in a video after the airstrike and shown to have the injuries. Individual messages can be fully encrypted. But the user has to turn on that function. It's not automatic, as it is on Signal and WhatsApp. Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, said: "Back in the Wild West period of content moderation, like 2014 or 2015, maybe they could have gotten away with it, but it stands in marked contrast with how other companies run themselves today."
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