The gunmen responsible for the Islamic terrorist attack on a French satirical magazine are dead after a raid by French police.
The raid ended a standoff where the two Islamic terrorists said they wanted to “die as martyrs” rather than surrender.
Cherif and Said Kouachi, 32 and 34, repeated their connections to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Military experts who viewed unedited footage of the attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo say it’s clear the men had military training.
U.S. intelligence sources confirmed that Cherif Kouachi went to Yemen in 2011 and was seen at an Al Qaeda training camp.
The raid that took out the Kouachis was 25 miles from Paris. At the same time, a raid in Paris took out a fellow terrorist who had taken hostages at a kosher market.
Amedy Coulibaly is reportedly the man who killed a Paris police officer on Thursday as she was working a routine traffic stop. Police say Coulibaly and his girlfriend Hayat Bourneddiene were the suspects of the police killing. She remains at large.
All the men involved in the attack were confirmed to be disciples of Djamel Beghal, a terrorist arrested in the United Arab Emirates after admitting he was conspiring to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
An American journalist that Al-Qaeda threatened to kill Saturday died during a rescue attempt by U.S. led forces.
U.S. Special Forces discovered the location where the Islamic terrorists were holding Luke Somers, 33, and a South African hostage, Pierre Korkie, 56, in the village of Dafaar. The raid just after midnight also left 13 terrorists dead.
Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula has been establishing itself in Yemen and has been gaining support among Sunnis in the nation.
The group has also been publicly denouncing ISIS but intelligence officials say that the groups are quietly working together behind the scenes. The group has two other western hostages that they are reportedly demanding cash ransom for their release.
Compounding the tragedy are reports from South Africa that the terrorists had agreed to release Korkie on Sunday, the day after the failed raid. The family said they hold no ill will toward the U.S. for their loved one’s death and said they “choose to forgive. We choose to love.”
The al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen has threatened to kill an American hostage.
The captive has been identified at 33-year-old Luke Somers, a British-born man who became an American citizen. Somers was working for the Yemen Times as a photojournalist.
Journalists throughout Yemen have been calling on the government to work for the journalist’s release, saying the kidnapping was an attempt to intimidate the country’s media.
The terrorists reportedly have made demands that have to be met in three days or they will kill Somers.
The terrorist group has already killed a hostage this week, former Yemeni Intelligence official Rashid al-Hebshi, whose body was found on Thursday.
Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby admitted there was a failed rescue attempt last month.
Security experts are raising the alarm over an Al-Qaeda plot to blow up at least five passenger airliners on Christmas in a 9/11 style coordinated attack.
The threat is so serious in the minds of British officials that they had considered a total ban on all carry on luggage as a way to thwart the plot.
“We’ve been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They’ve been waiting for the big one,” an airport security source told the London Express. “We have many scares but this one nearly got hand baggage pulled from all airlines. The threat is still alive and real.”
The source says the plot is aimed at European airports because U.S. security measures have increased significantly compared to their counterparts around the world.
The plot reportedly would include radicalized Britons who have returned to the country from being a part of the battles in Syria and the middle east. Some have received terrorist training in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative,” terrorism expert Dr. Sally Leivesley told the Express. “They see themselves at the forefront of attempts to change the world and are represent a very dangerous tool for the terrorists. These sleepers will have been from ordinary and not very religious families and not only is the threat from them here but also when they return battle hardened from Syria and Iraq.”
The Islamic caliphate of ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi now has at least 12 militarized allies including nine outside of Iraq and Syria.
NYMag.com reported that the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium identified 12 groups that have pledged to back ISIS although they acknowledged other groups could be supporting ISIS without making a formal announcement.
The report shows that ISIS is taking a large part of the Al-Qaeda terror network.
Taliban splinter group Jundallah has joined other Tehrik-i-Taliban affiliates in Pakistan in aligning with ISIS. The Taliban leaders had long been aligned with Al-Qaeda, so the breakaway parts of the organization joining ISIS are a sign that the former world terror group is losing significant power in the Islamic terrorism community.
One group has been announced inside the Gaza Strip. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which fired rockets into Israel this summer during the terrorist campaign against Israelis, has pledged their support to ISIS and changed their named to al-Dawla al-Islamiyya or The Islamic State.
Groups have also announced their allegiance in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Philippines, Lebanon, Indonesia and Jordan.
The two biggest terrorist organizations in the world are joining forces in Syria to fight U.S. backed rebels.
The Associated Press reports that leaders from ISIS and Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, agreed in northern Syria during meetings to stop fighting each other to focus on destroying rebels in Syria before teaming up to focus on the Al-Assad government.
The two terrorist groups had been fighting to determine who would be the main group attempting to overthrow the Syrian government.
The rebels, who are backed by airstrikes by U.S. aircraft on ISIS positions, are considered to be relatively weak and disorganized compared to their terrorist opposition. A combined force could be too much for the rebels to defeat.
The news of the joining of forces comes as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted the possibility of U.S. combat troops returning to Iraq.
“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been severely wounded in one of the airstrikes aimed at stopping the advance of the terrorist group.
Iraqi officials said Sunday that al-Baghdadi was struck during a U.S. airstrike on a convoy near the town of Qaim in western Iraq.
In addition to the wounding of the group’s leader, several key ISIS officials were killed in the attack including al-Baghdadi’s right hand man, Auf Abdulrahman Elefery. Twenty terrorists total were killed in the airstrike on the ISIS leader.
Baghdadi was an Islamic preacher who radicalized after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He later received training from al-Qaeda and lead the ISIS breakaway from al-Qaeda with designs to be the main Islamic terrorist group in the world.
Officials say that airstrikes over the weekend killed over 50 ISIS terrorists in addition to the strike that wounded al-Baghdadi. President Obama has said he will send an additional 1,500 troops to the region to “train” the Iraqi army.
Al Qaeda killed at least 33 people on Monday during an attack on a city in central Yemen.
The terrorists seized a central Yemeni city as they’ve launched an offensive against the Shi’ite Muslim Houthis that are in control of the Yemeni capital. The country is considered a prize for the terrorist group because it shares a border with Saudi Arabia.
Al Qaeda marched into al-Odayn, a city of 200,000, and raised their flag over the city’s local government offices. Witnesses say the invasion took only a few minutes and that local officials gave no resistance to the terrorist group.
“They came in at midday, invaded the town, chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Greater) and seized the government compound unopposed,” the witness said.
The Houthi forces have used the capital as a base to spread out across the nation in an attempt to drive the terrorists out of the city.
The head of the FBI has confirmed that an al-Qaeda cell that was struck last month in Syria is likely still working on a plan to attack the United States and its allies.
“Given our visibility we know they’re serious people, bent on destruction,” FBI Director James Comey said. He added they’re looking to make the attack “very, very soon.”
The revelation came during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Comey said that at least a dozen Americans have been confirmed to be fighting alongside the ISIS terrorists and al-Qaeda related groups. He said that anyone confirmed to be associated with the terrorists and then return to the United States will be tracked “very carefully.”
Comey said that Americans should be more confident in the government after 9/11.
“[The government is] better organized, better systems, better equipment, smarter deployment. We’re better in every way that you’d want us to be since 9/11.”
President Obama gave a confusing speech to the American people Wednesday night where he said that he would fight Islamic terrorism and that terrorists would have no place to hide…
But then he said that ISIS, the group that beheaded two Americans and has carried out mass killings of Christians across Iraq, is not Muslim and thus not an Islamic terrorist group.
“ISIL is not Islamic,” the President said. “No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”
The President then went on to say that even though they are not Islamic, they used to be the Iraq branch of the Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda.
“It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border,” Obama said. “ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.”
The President did acknowledge the Christians who have been killed and driven from their homes by the Islamic terrorist group.
“This includes Sunni and Shia Muslims who are at grave risk, as well as tens of thousands of Christians and other religious minorities,” Obama said. “We cannot allow these communities to be driven from their ancient homelands.”