(MENAFN- Arab Times) A series of Islamic State suicide car bombings targeting a military outpost in Anbar province killed eight soldiers and wounded six Monday, military and security officials said, the latest extremist attacks to hit beleaguered Iraqi forces in the region.
The assault west of Anbar's provincial capital, Ramadi, involved three vehicles, including two fuel trucks, officials said. The outpost housed a joint contingent of army soldiers, policemen and allied Sunni militiamen, they said. Monday's violence is the latest deadly Islamic State attack in Anbar, where government forces backed by US-led airstrikes have been battling the extremist group for months. Since Friday, at least 75 soldiers and allied Sunni militiamen have been killed. Much of Anbar is under the extremists' control, including Ramadi and the key city of Fallujah.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State group has blown up a famed temple in Syria's ancient Palmyra, in an act the UN condemned as a war crime and an "immense loss" for humanity. The destruction of the Baal Shamin temple, considered the second-most significant in ancient Palmyra, raised concerns for the rest of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. It comes only days after IS beheaded the 82-year-old retired chief archaeologist of Palmyra, sparking widespread condemnation. "This destruction is a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity," said Irina Bokova, the head of the UN cultural watchdog UNESCO, calling for the perpetrators to be held accountable. "DAESH (IS) is killing people and destroying sites, but cannot silence history and will ultimately fail to erase this great culture from the memory of the world," Bokova said in a statement. Syria's antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim told AFP the temple was destroyed on Sunday. "Our worst fears are sadly being realised," Abdulkarim said.
UN Security Council members on Monday opened their first-ever meeting on LGBT rights to hear Syrian and Iraqi gays tell of terror under Islamic State rule. "It's historic," US Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters ahead of the meeting. "It's about time - 70 years after the creation of the UN - that the fate of LGBT persons who fear for their lives around the world is taking center stage." UN envoys were to hear accounts from Adnan, an Iraqi who fled northern Iraq after being targeted as gay and from a Syrian, Subhi Nahas, who escaped persecution and now works for a refugee organization in the United States. Since July 2014, the Islamic State group has released at least seven videos or photos online that show the brutal executions of people accused of "sodomy," according to the International Gay and Lesbian Rights Commission. Jessica Stern, the director of the commission, was also to address the meeting, hosted by the delegations from the United States and Chile.
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