Like most high school seniors, Abdullahi Yusuf tried to avoid hugging his father in view of other teens. But on the morning of May 28, 2014, as he was being dropped off in front of Heritage Academy in southeast Minneapolis, the rail-thin 18-year-old, who went by the nickname Bones, startled his dad with a tender good-bye embrace. Unbeknownst to his father, Yusuf believed he’d never see any member of his family again.

Two famous ancient structures in the city of Palmyra have been destroyed by ISIS forces, Syria's antiquities chief says. The Tetrapylon and the facade of the city's Roman theater have both been almost completely demolished, the official says, according to NPR's Alison Meuse. "Activist Khaled al-Homsi, who is from Palmyra, shared satellite imagery to Twitter, which appears to confirm the scale of the damage," Alison reports. "The face of the Roman theater is a pile of rubble and only four of the Tetrapylon's 16 columns appear to be standing."

A pair of B-2 "stealth" bombers blasted two ISIS training camps in Libya on Wednesday evening, dropping 108 precision-guided bombs and sending jihadists scattering -- many of whom were then "cleaned up" by drone-launched hellfire missiles, U.S. defense officials told Fox News.

The Iraqi army says it is preparing military operations to retake western Mosul, the last urban stronghold in Iraq of so-called Islamic State. The preparations follow a recent offensive which officials said on Wednesday had recaptured nearly all of the city's east. Counter-terror chief Talib Shaghati said special forces had retaken all eastern districts assigned to them.

And some experts fear intolerance among the British Muslim community has sent young gay Muslims into the arms of ISIS. The Times says the messages, uncovered by counter-terrorism experts, show the men have stronger feelings than what an expert dubbed "heterosexual bonding". If the men were caught having a gay relationship they would probably be put to death as jihadists consider homosexuality a sin.

Brigadier General Wathiq al-Hamdani, the Police Commander of Nineveh Province, announced that Iraqi forces have arrested one of the ISIS elements, who was the terrorist group’s executioner. “This person was identified using the photos earlier released by Daesh members, and was arrested in al-Samah district in eastern Mosul,” he noted, according to a Farsi report by Al Alam. The terrorist’s name has not been declared yet.

The Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) international terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the New Year’s Eve shooting in a crowded Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people. IS issued a statement calling the gunman its “soldier,” who attacked Christians for celebrating a holiday the jihadist terrorists deem “apostate.”

The US has described as "ludicrous" a claim by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that it supported so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said there was no basis for such an accusation. The Turkish leader earlier said he had evidence and also said the US had supported the Kurdish YPG and PYD groups. Turkish troops have been fighting to push IS out of northern Syria.

More than 2,000 Saudis are fighting abroad with extremist groups, with over 70 percent of them in Syria, the kingdom's interior ministry was reported as saying Monday. "The number of Saudis proven to be in conflict areas is 2,093," interior ministry spokesman General Mansour al-Turki told daily newspaper Al-Hayat. He said that 1,540 of them were in Syria, where militants have flocked since ISIS seized control of vast areas in mid-2014.

So-called Islamic State (IS) has said one of its militants carried out the lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market, which left 12 people dead. The group claimed the attack through its self-styled news agency. Earlier, German prosecutors released the only suspect who had been held, citing insufficient evidence. He had been identified by media only as Pakistani national Naved B. Officials suggested that a perpetrator or perpetrators might be on the run.

Isis is providing young boys and girls in the territory it controls with apps to access violent jihadi websites, as it makes increasing use of child fighters in a battle for survival in Iraq and Syria.  The attempt to “create a new generation of terrorists”, say military and security officials, comes amid evidence of a new drive to recruit among the young in the West to carry out attacks in Europe and America as well as make the journey to the Middle East to join the fighting.

Sometime in the middle of 2012, a friend of Neil Prakash asked the young Australian if he was religious. "I'm a Buddhist," said Prakash, "but I believe there is a god, a deity". "You are not a Buddhist then," replied the friend, "you are confused". The simple exchange marked the beginning of a journey, literal and spiritual, that took Prakash from his home town of Melbourne to the heartland of the so-called Islamic State.

An Isis truck bomb at an Iraqi petrol station where buses filled with Shia pilgrims were parked has killed at least 80 people. Only ten Iraqi nationals were among the victims, and many were Iranian visitors returning from the Arbaeen ceremony in Karbala, Iraqi security officials said on Thursday, although details on the identities of the dead are still emerging.

Forces battling the Islamic State group in northern Iraq have cut off the jihadists’ last supply line from Mosul to Syria, trapping them in the city for a bloody last stand. A day after the last major bridge over the Tigris in Mosul was bombed by the US-led coalition against IS, elite forces fighting in the east of the city also reported significant progress.

When footage emerged of ISIS destroying the ancient city of Nimrud outside Mosul, the world stood powerless in the face of a group of militants using sledgehammers and electric drills to obliterate centuries-old archaeological gems. But 17-year-old Nenous Thabit rolled up his sleeves and began work on replicating the sculptures. For Thabit, an Assyrian Christian, the 3,000-year-old city -- which once formed the capital of an Assyrian empire reaching from Egypt to parts of modern-day Iran and Turkey -- was a source of pride. He considers the artifacts of Nimrud to be the work of his ancestors.

Weapons meant for Western-backed rebels in Syria are ending up in the hands of so-called Islamic State in neighbouring Iraq - but how are they getting there?

A teenager who had been recruited by the Islamic State in Mosul killed the whole of his six-member family when his explosive belt went off inside their home east of the city. Three children were reportedly among those killed by the unnamed boy's explosive device. The boy, who belonged to the so-called 'Cubs of the Caliphate' squad, had been given the suicide belt by other members of the terror group, Alsumaria News reports.

Two men who cooperated with authorities investigating a Minnesota-based conspiracy to join the Islamic State group in Syria were rewarded with light sentences Monday, but a third who chose not to help prosecutors got a 10-year sentence from a federal judge who still cut him a break partly because his parents have become active in the campaign against terrorist recruiting within the state’s large Somali community.

Documents recovered from a liberated town in Iraq, including a chart explaining jihadi fighters’ cash-for-terror tiered reward system, give further insight into the corrupt and complex day-to-day function of the Islamic State. The chart, outlining the terror group’s reward system for successful militant activities, was found along with other documents, official papers, religious texts and personal notebooks recovered from the liberated town of Bashiqa in northern Iraq, close to Mosul. The cache was seized by Kurdish Peshmerga following a battle to recapture the Iraqi town held by the Islamic State for two years, according to Sky News.

Peshmerga fighter Ako Abdulrahman saved 70 people from ISIS snipers in Kirkuk by driving them to safety in his bulletproof BMW.