ISIS Threatening To Assassinate Pope Francis

Pope Francis is standing up to the terrorist group Islamic State by heading to Albania for weekend services despite clear warnings the group intends to kill him.

He will be the first sitting Pope since 1933 to visit Albania when he arrives Saturday.

Iraq’s Ambassador to the Holy See has told the Vatican and local newspapers that ISIS had made it clear they want to kill him.

“What has been declared by the self-declared Islamic State is clear – they want to kill the pope. The threats against the Pope are credible,” Habeeb Al Sadr said. “I believe they could try to kill him during one of his overseas trips or even in Rome. There are members of ISIL who are not Arabs but Canadian, American, French, British, also Italians. ISIL could engage any of these to commit a terrorist attack in Europe.”

Al Sadr said when the Pope condemned the terrorists for their killings of innocents he basically put a target on himself.  While the Vatican downplayed the threat, Al Sadr said it’s a very real danger.

“This band of criminals does not just issue threats,” Al Sadr said. “In Iraq, they have already violated and destroyed some of the most sacred sites of the Shiite faith. They have struck at Yazidi and Christian places of worship. They have declared that whoever is not with them, is against them. Either convert or be killed. And they are doing it it is a genocide.”

The Pope released a simple statement on the matter.

“I decided to visit this country because it has suffered greatly as a result of a terrible atheist regime and is now realizing the peaceful co-existence of its various religious components,” Pope Francis said.

ISIS Too Extreme For Osama Bin Laden

While the world has only recently become aware of the brutality and extremism of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, late Taliban leader Osama Bin Laden reportedly had been warned about the group before his death in 2011.

The London Daily Mail is reporting that a letter found in the Bin Laden compound after the removal of Osama Bin Laden outlined the dangers of the group calling themselves the Islamic State.

The letter had Bin Laden calling for anyone connected to al-Qaeda to immediately sever their ties with Islamic State because of their “extreme brutality” and said the group obtained and had been using chemical weapons even on mosques.

The United States began air strikes last week against ISIS over their continued attempts to take over Iraq.   The U.S. also has announced they will be providing weapons to the Kurdish fighters in the northern part of Iraq to help drive the terrorists away from villages housing tens of thousands of Christian and Jewish refugees.

International aid drops have been conducted in northern regions where the terrorists have trapped refugees in mountain regions.