retaliatory

Operation Hawkeye has killed and captured more than 50 ISIL fighters after hitting about 100 targets.

United States forces have carried out a series of strikes against ISIL (ISIS) targets in Syria in retaliation for last year’s killing of two of its soldiers and an interpreter.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Saturday that it attacked more than 30 ISIL targets in Syria between February 3 and 12, hitting the armed group’s infrastructure and weapons storage facilities with “precision munitions”.

CENTCOM said it launched the most recent attacks to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network”.

ISIL attacked US and Syrian forces near the historic city of Palmyra in December, killing Sergeant Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, identified as an American civilian interpreter.

Launched after the killings, Operation Hawkeye has killed and captured more than 50 fighters and hit about 100 ISIL infrastructure targets over the past two months, said CENTCOM.

The US military on Friday completed the transfer of thousands of ISIL detainees from Syria to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial.

The prisoners were sent to Iraq at the request of Baghdad in a move welcomed by the US-led coalition that had for years fought against the armed group.

In other developments, the Syrian Ministry of Defence confirmed that government forces took control of the al-Tanf military base in the east of the country, which was run for years by US troops fighting ISIL.

The US-led coalition worked alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the battle that led to ISIL’s territorial defeat in Syria in 2019.

However, Washington has now drawn close to Syria’s new authorities, recently saying that the purpose of its alliance with the SDF was largely over.

The US withdrawal from al-Tanf comes as Damascus seeks to extend its control over all of Syria.

Lawyers for the Ecuadorian asylum seeker have speculated the Trump administration is seeking ‘retaliatory’ actions.

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has revealed it will continue to seek the deportation of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias, after their recent return to Minnesota.

The department, however, denied it is seeking their expedited removal, as the family’s lawyer claimed.

“These are regular removal proceedings,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Friday. “This is standard procedure, and there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”

Conejo Ramos’s case has drawn nationwide attention since his initial detention on January 20.

Photos went viral of Conejo Ramos standing in the snow, dressed in floppy blue bunny ears, with an immigration agent grabbing onto his Spiderman backpack.

Officials in Minnesota’s Columbia Heights Public School District accused immigration officials of using the preschool student as “bait” for his father. DHS, meanwhile, has claimed that his father abandoned the child when approached by immigration authorities.

Each side has denied the other’s account of the January 20 arrest.

Since December, the administration of President Donald Trump has led an immigration crackdown in Minnesota known as Operation Metro Surge. As many as 3,000 agents were deployed to the state at the operation’s height.

But bystander videos and photos have raised questions about the heavy-handed tactics being used, particularly in the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area.

There, two US citizens were shot dead by immigration agents in the last month alone: Renee Nicole Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24.

The outcry over the shooting deaths, as well as other reports of violence against bystanders and warrantless arrests, has prompted the Trump administration to announce this week the withdrawal of nearly 700 immigration agents.

The detention of Conejo Ramos and his father had been among the high-profile flashpoints during the crackdown.

The five-year-old and his father were detained as they were coming home from preschool. They were quickly transported from Minnesota to Dilley, Texas, where they were kept in an immigration processing centre while Trump officials sought their expulsion.

But on January 27, Judge Fred Biery ruled that the two should be released while they challenged their expulsion.

“They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,” Biery wrote in his brief but cutting decision.

Conejo Ramos and his father arrived in the US from Ecuador. Their legal team has said the pair entered the country legally and were in the midst of their asylum proceedings at the time of their detention.

Lawyer Danielle Molliver told Minnesota Public Radio this week that DHS had filed documents to expedite the father and son’s removal, speculating that the action was “retaliatory”.

“It’s really frustrating as an attorney, because they keep throwing new obstacles in our way,” she told the public broadcaster. “There’s absolutely no reason that this should be expedited.”

Iran has announced that it now considers all European Union militaries to be ‘terrorist groups’. This follows the EU’s terror designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) over a deadly crackdown on protesters.

Move comes after a European Union decision to label the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a ‘terrorist organisation’.

Iran has declared European armies “terrorist groups” after a European Union decision to apply the same designation to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) over a bloody crackdown on recent protests.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Sunday the decision was made under “Article 7 of the Law on Countermeasures Against the Declaration of the IRGC as a Terrorist Organisation”.

“Europeans have in fact shot themselves in the foot and, once again, through blind obedience to the Americans, decided against the interests of their own people,” Ghalibaf said.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced the bloc’s designation of the IRGC on Thursday, saying repression could not “go unanswered”.

“Any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working toward its own demise,” she wrote on social media.

The United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says it has confirmed 6,713 deaths during the nationwide protests that began on December 28 over economic grievances but soon evolved into a serious challenge to the government.

Iranian authorities have not announced any official arrest numbers, but said at least 3,117 people were killed during the protests, including 2,427 described as “innocent” protesters or security forces.

Internet and mobile access were cut off by the state across Iran on the night of January 8, during the height of the protests.

The IRGC is a branch of Iran’s military, established after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Operating alongside the regular armed forces, it answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and plays a central role in Iran’s defence, foreign operations, and regional influence.

Iran’s retaliatory move came amid weeks of rising tensions, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatening military strikes and building up its naval presence ⁠in the Middle East. Trump, however, said on Saturday that Iran was “seriously talking” with the US, hours after Iran’s top national security official said arrangements for negotiations were progressing.

Iranian officials have warned that any attack would draw a “comprehensive” response. Tehran has also planned a live-fire military drill for Sunday and Monday in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes.

Meanwhile, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday said if ‍the US ‍attacked Iran, it would become a regional conflict.

“[Trump] regularly says that he brought ships […] The Iranian nation shall not be scared by these things, ‍the Iranian people will ⁠not be stirred by these threats,” Khamenei said.

“We are not the initiators and do not want to attack any country, but the Iranian nation will strike a strong blow against anyone who attacks and harasses them.”