TV News LIES

The United Nations mission to Iraq said Sunday that violence in the country amid the war against the extremist Islamic State group killed at least 1,375 people in January.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq, known as UNAMI, put the number of civilians killed at 790, while identifying the rest as security forces members. It said at least 1,469 civilians and 771 security forces members were wounded.

It said the worst affected city was the capital, Baghdad, with 256 civilians killed and 758 wounded.

Japan and other nations condemned with outrage and horror on Sunday the beheading purportedly by the Islamic State group of Kenji Goto, a journalist who sought through his coverage of Syria to convey the plight of refugees, children and other victims of war.

The failure to save Goto raised fears for the life of a Jordanian fighter pilot also held hostage by the extremists. Unlike earlier messages, an online video purporting to show an Islamic State group militant beheading Goto, circulated via social media late Saturday by militant sympathizers, did not mention the pilot.

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters struck at Kurdish forces southwest of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, while bombs in and near Baghdad killed 27 people, security and medical sources said.

Police in the northern province of Kirkuk said ISIL launched mortars and attacked positions of Kurdish peshmerga fighters in four districts southwest of Kirkuk City.

Since surging across the Syrian border last summer, ISIL has frequently battled security forces and Shia armed groups in the south and west of Iraq, but attacks on the outskirts of Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk have been rare.

The Israeli government on Friday published tenders to build 450 settler homes in the West Bank, the head of an NGO that monitors settlement activity told AFP, in what a senior PLO official called a “war crime.” The Housing Ministry denied the tenders were new.

“It’s the opening of the settlement floodgates,” said Daniel Seidemann, head of the Terrestrial Jerusalem group, adding that the announcements were the first since October 2014 and unlikely to be the last before the March 17 general election.

Clashes with Islamic State militants killed a senior Kurdish military commander and eight of his fighters just outside the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Friday, officials said.

Attacks elsewhere killed 27 people, with twin bombs hitting a crowded market in Baghdad and a suicide bomber targeting pro-government Shiite militiamen who were manning a checkpoint outside a city north of the Iraqi capital.

Apartheid-era death-squad leader Eugene de Kock, dubbed “Prime Evil” for his role in the torture and murder of black South African activists in the 1980s and early 1990s, was granted parole on Friday after 20 years in prison.

"In the interest of nation-building and reconciliation I have decided to place Mr. De Kock on parole," Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha told a news briefing, adding that the date and location of De Kock’s release would be kept secret.