Tag Archives: IS

Belgian police alerted to IS Fighters en route to Europe

A Belgian police officer patrols near an apartment building during the reconstruction of the recent attacks, in the Brussels

By Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian police have received an anti-terror alert warning that a group of Islamic State fighters recently left Syria en route for Europe planning attacks in Belgium and France, a Belgian security source said on Wednesday.

The Belgian crisis center in charge of coordinating security responses said an alert had been circulated to all police forces in the country but there were no immediate plans to raise the security level to the maximum that would indicate an imminent threat of an attack.

A source at France’s Interior Ministry said Belgian authorities had transmitted a note to their French counterparts, who were currently reviewing the information in the alert. “We know the threat is very high,” the source said. “We’re reviewing all the elements (in the alert).”

Newspaper DH quoted the alert from Belgium’s anti-terror cell as saying the group “left Syria about a week and a half ago aiming to reach Europe via Turkey and Greece by boat without passports”, without giving an exact departure date.

The Belgian security source confirmed the contents of the alert. The Belgian federal police declined to comment and the French source could not confirm the content.

DH said the fighters were armed and aimed to split into two units, one aiming to carry out attacks in Belgium, the other in France. Potential targets in Belgium included a shopping center, a fast-food restaurant and a police station.

It mentioned no specific targets in France, which is hosting the Euro 2016 soccer championships in 10 stadiums across the country until July 10. Some 2.5 million spectators are expected to watch the 51 matches.

“We know there are fighters who are coming back (to Europe),” French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told a news conference on Wednesday, adding he could not confirm the specific alert from Belgium.

The alert came two days after an attacker who pledged allegiance to Islamic State killed a French police commander and his partner at their home outside Paris, and four days after a gunman declaring loyalty to the Islamist militant group massacred 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

NO CHANGE IN SECURITY LEVEL

Belgian authorities raised the threat level for the capital Brussels to the maximum of four shortly after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people and after suicide bombers killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on the city’s metro on March 22. The status was lowered on each occasion after a few days.

Belgian police have arrested a number of men of Moroccan origin suspected of direct or indirect involvement in the Paris and Brussels attacks.

A spokesman for the Belgian crisis center said that despite the latest alert, the body that sets the security level did not have any indication of an imminent threat.

“We are still at level three, which refers to a threat that is serious, and we have been at this level since November,” he said. “It is true that you should be careful in areas with large concentrations of people… Security has already been reinforced at all these targets. For now, there has not been a change.”

(Additional reporting by Chine Labbe, Elizabeth Pineau and Jean-Baptiste Vey in Paris,; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Gareth Jones)

Flow of civilians from Falluja slows as IS tightens grip

Iraqi soldiers prepare to go to battle against Islamic State militants at the frontline in Falluja, Iraq, June 14, 2016. R

By Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles

BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – About 40,000 residents of Falluja, Islamic State’s besieged stronghold near Baghdad, have fled in the last three weeks, but a similar number are trapped despite the Iraqi army’s attempts to secure escape routes for them, officials said on Tuesday.

Officials in Anbar province, where Falluja is located, said Islamic State was tightening control over civilian movement in the center where the United Nations and a provincial official estimate around 40,000 civilians are stuck with little food or water.

The group has used residents as human shields to slow the troops’ advance and thwart the air campaign backing them.

By midday on Tuesday fewer than 1,000 people had fled Falluja through a southwestern route secured by the military on Sunday at al-Salam Junction, a Norwegian aid group said, down from 4,000 and 3,300 on each of the previous two days.

The United Nations recently put the total population at 90,000 people, a fraction of its size before IS took over.

The army, counter-terrorism forces and Shi’ite Muslim paramilitary fighters backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition launched a major operation last month to retake the mainly Sunni city, an hour’s drive from Baghdad.

But Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi slowed the advance to protect civilians amid fears of sectarian violence, and Iraqi forces have made only piecemeal gains in recent days as they try to reach the city center.

Most of those displaced on Tuesday came from the outskirts, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which is providing aid to escapees at nearby camps who join around four million others displaced across the country.

Islamic State has alternately attacked civilians trying to leave and forced them to pay an exit tax of more than $100 per person, said Karl Schembri, an NRC spokesman.

“The journey is still full of risks and extremely unsafe,” he said in an email.

“IN TERRIBLE TROUBLE”

Falih al-Essawi, deputy head of the Anbar provincial council, said the militants had threatened to shoot fleeing families.

Aid groups providing food, water and other supplies to escapees do not have access to the city itself, which was besieged by government forces for around six months before the current advance began, prompting the United Nations and rights groups to warn about an imminent humanitarian crisis.

“The fighting has now gone on for nearly three weeks. Those people were in trouble before the operation began and we have to now assume that they are in terrible trouble,” Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said in a telephone interview.

Iraq said on Monday it had made arrests as it investigates allegations that Shi’ite militiamen helping the army retake Falluja had executed dozens of Sunni Muslim men fleeing the city held by Islamic State.

The participation of militias in the battle of Falluja, just west of Baghdad, alongside the Iraqi army had already raised fears of sectarian killings.

Falluja is a historic bastion of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces that toppled Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, and the Shi’ite-led governments that followed.

The push on Falluja comes at the same time as other enemies of Islamic State launched major offensives on other fronts, including a push by U.S.-backed forces against the city of Manbij in northern Syria.

They amount to the most sustained pressure on the militants since they proclaimed their caliphate in 2014.

NORTHERN OFFENSIVE

While it kept focus on Falluja, the Iraqi army also pressed on with an advance south of Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto capital seized in 2014 along with a third of Iraq’s territory.

Backed by coalition airstrikes and artillery, Iraqi forces retook the hilltop village of Nasr on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, about 275 kilometers (170 miles) north of Baghdad, a military statement said. The army had recaptured Nasr two months ago but retreated a day later, drawing criticisms that it was unprepared.

The army was still pushing to retake another village in the Haj Ali area, which it pushed into at the weekend.

Across the river is the Islamic State hub of Qayara, where there is an airfield that could serve as a staging ground for the future offensive on Mosul, about 60 kilometers further north.

“The bridges are ready,” said an Iraqi officer involved in the operation. “When we occupy the Qayara base, Mosul will be within reach”.

The officer said Islamic State had not mounted a strong defense of Haj Ali, and that more than 20 fighters had been killed, while others fled across the river. “Our intelligence says that they are collapsing,” he said.

Elite Iraqi forces are also preparing to advance up the Tigris river valley towards Qayara from the south, military officials said on Tuesday.

If successful, the move would isolate the militant-held districts of Hawija and Shirqat from the rest of the territory Islamic State controls to the west.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed, editing by Peter Millership)