Tag Archives: ISIS

U.K. to Build Cyber Attack Forces to Take On ISIS

British Finance Minister George Osborne said on Tuesday that Britain was building an elite cyber force to take down ISIS fighters, hackers, and hostile powers.

Osborne went on to tell Reuters that the Islamic State is trying to develop a way to attack British infrastructure including power networks, air traffic control systems, and hospital.

“The stakes could hardly be higher – if our electricity supply, or our air traffic control, or our hospitals were successfully attacked online, the impact could be measured not just in terms of economic damage but of lives lost,” he told CNBC News.

As a response, he stated that Britain would fight fire with fire by developing their own cyber attack force.

“We will defend ourselves. But we will also take the fight to you,” Osborne said in a speech at Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency.

“We are building our own offensive cyber capability – a dedicated ability to counter-attack in cyberspace. When we talk about tackling (Islamic State), that means tackling their cyber threat as well as their guns, bombs and knives.”

The cyber attack force will be headed jointly by GCHQ – Britain’s spy agency – and the Defence Ministry. They will target criminal gangs, individual hackers, militant groups, and hostile powers.

Public spending on cyber security will be doubled by 2020 Osborne told Reuter, raising the budget to almost $3 billion. GCHQ has already been monitoring various cyber threats as cyber security issues have doubled to 200 a month since last year. The new cyber security plan also includes training coders, blocking bad URLs, and fending off malware attacks.

Currently, ISIS has been using the Internet to spread its propaganda and lead more people to their radical cause.

“They have not been able to use it to kill people yet by attacking our infrastructure through cyber attack,” Osborne added. “But we know they want it and are doing their best to build it.”

The global cyber war against ISIS has also caught the attention of the hacktivist group “Anonymous” who released a video earlier this week declaring cyber war on the Islamic State.

Turkey and U.S. Advance Plans to Shut Northern Syrian Border from ISIS

In a statement by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday, Turkey and the United States are working on an operation to finish securing the northern Syrian border. The area that will be the focus is controlled by radical Islamists that have used it as a smuggling route.

“The entire border of northern Syria – 75 percent of it has now been shut off. And we are entering an operation with the Turks to shut off the other remaining 98 kilometers,” Kerry said in an interview with CNN.

According to Reuters, the area where the operations would take place is now controlled by the radical Islamists. The United States and Turkey hope that by sweeping Islamic State, also frequently called Daesh, from that border zone they can deprive it of route which has seen its ranks swell with foreign fighters and its coffers boosted by illicit trade.

Kerry mentioned the operation with Turkey as he described to CNN the mounting pressure on IS in both Syria and Iraq, but wouldn’t elaborate on what it amounted to and whether the U.S. would send ground troops to take part in the operation. U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of special forces against IS in an apparent deviation from an initial pledge not to have boots on the ground in the campaign.

Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu stated to the state-run Anadolu Agency, “We will not allow Daesh to continue its presence on our border.”

The fight against ISIS has increased in fervor with intense air strikes by both Russian and French warplanes since attacks claimed by the group killed 129 people in Paris last week and a bomb downed a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last month, killing 224.

Russia Promises Revenge on Bombing of Plane

The explosion of a Russian jetliner that took off from Sinai was the result of a terrorist attack according to Russia’s chief intelligence officer, Alexander Bortnikov.  The mid-air explosion of  the Russian jetliner over the Sinai desert last month  killed all 224 people on board .“Traces of foreign explosives” were found on debris from the Airbus plane, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin vowed to step up his country’s military campaign against Islamist militants in Syria

According to Reuters, Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.

During a Kremlin meeting broadcasted on Tuesday, Putin addressed the Russian people.  

“The murder of our people in Sinai is among the bloodiest crimes in terms of victims. We will not wipe away the tears from our soul and hearts. This will stay with us forever but will not stop us finding and punishing the criminals.”

Putin then promised, “We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

The FSB security service announced a bounty of $50 million to find those responsible and said that award would be paid out for information that helps detain persons who blew up the Russian plane in Egypt.

According to several news reports, Egyptian authorities have detained two employees of Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the downed plane originated, for questioning, two security officials and an airport employee said on Tuesday.

Most of the A321 passengers on the doomed plane were Russian tourists flying home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

France, Russia strike Islamic State in Syria, EU aid invoked

By Chine Labbé and Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) – France and Russia staged air strikes on Islamic State targets in northern Syria on Tuesday, punishing the group for attacks in Paris and against a Russian airliner that together killed 353 people.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a coordinated onslaught in Paris on Friday and the downing of a Russian charter jet over Sinai on Oct. 31, saying they were in retaliation for French and Russian air raids in Iraq and Syria.

Still reeling from the Paris carnage that killed 129, most of them young people, France formally requested European Union assistance in its fight against the militants and British Prime Minister David Cameron edged closer to extending military action against Islamic State in Syria.

Police investigating the worst atrocity in France since World War Two discovered two safe houses in Paris where they believe the militants launched their assault. Underlining the widening scope of the probe, police in Germany said they arrested five suspects, including two women.

In Moscow, the Kremlin acknowledged that a bomb had destroyed a Russian airliner last month, killing 224 people. President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible and intensify air strikes against Islamists in Syria.

“Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued,” he said. “It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

Western officials said Russia launched a “significant number” of strikes in Syria on Tuesday hitting the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. In a separate action, apparently not coordinated, French warplanes targeted Raqqa for a second day.

French President Francois Hollande has said he will see Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama in the coming days to try to convince them to join a grand coalition against Islamic State which controls swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Russia began air strikes in Syria at the end of September. It has always said its main target is Islamic State, but most of its bombs in the past have hit territory held by other groups opposed to its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 

MANHUNT

In Brussels, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked the EU’s mutual assistance clause for the first time since the 2009 Lisbon Treaty introduced the possibility, saying he expected help with French operations in Syria, Iraq and Africa.

“This is firstly a political act,” Le Drian told a news conference after a meeting of EU defense chiefs.

The 28 EU member states accepted the French request but it was not immediately clear what assistance would be forthcoming.

A manhunt was continuing in France and Belgium on Tuesday for one of the eight attackers in the Paris assault.

French police staged 128 raids overnight in the hunt for accomplices and Islamist militant networks, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. Police found a third Belgian-licensed car believed to have been used by the attackers and sealed off the area around it in Paris’ 18th district.

Cazeneuve told France Info radio police were making rapid progress in their investigation but declined to give details.

One top suspect, Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, 26, remains at large after escaping back to Belgium early on Saturday and eluding a police dragnet in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, where he lived with his two brothers.

One of the brothers blew himself up outside a Paris cafe on Friday, seriously injuring many bystanders.

Hollande, who has declared a state of emergency, met visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday to press his call for the U.S.-led and Russian-led coalitions to join forces.

Kerry told reporters afterwards that Islamic State was losing territory in Syria and Iraq, but said increased co-ordination with Moscow would require progress in a political drive to end the war. That process is complicated by a U.S. demand that Assad steps down as president.

 

“DON’T SCAPEGOAT REFUGEES”

The U.N. refugee agency and Germany’s police chief urged European countries not to demean or reject refugees because one of Friday’s Paris bombers was believed to have slipped into Europe among migrants registered in Greece.

“We are deeply disturbed by language that demonizes refugees as a group,” U.N. spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said after government officials in Poland, Slovakia and the German state of Bavaria cited the Paris attacks as a reason to refuse refugees.

The head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Office said there was no sign that Islamist militants had entered Germany posing as an asylum seeker to commit an attack.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Paris would spare no expense to reinforce and equip its security forces and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism, even though that was bound to involve breaching European budget deficit limits.

“We have to face up to this, and Europe ought to understand,” he told France Inter radio.

The European Commission said it would show understanding to France if additional security spending pushed up its deficit.

As France geared up for a long war, the British prime minister said he would present a “comprehensive strategy” for tackling Islamic State to parliament. British war planes have been bombing the militants in Iraq, but not Syria.

“It is in Syria, in Raqqa, that Isil has its headquarters and it is from Raqqa that some of the main threat against this country are planned and orchestrated,” Cameron said, referring to Islamic State by one of its many acronyms.

“Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake.”

French prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants from Friday night — four Frenchmen and a foreigner fingerprinted in Greece among refugees last month.

In addition to the suspect on the run, police believe at least four other people helped organize the mayhem.

Investigators believe the attacks may have been ordered by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national now living in Syria where he has become an Internet propagandist for Islamic State under the nom de guerre Abu Omar al-Belgiki — the Belgian.

Belgian media have reported that Salah Abdeslam spent time in jail for robbery five years ago alongside Abaaoud.

Police in France named two of the French attackers as Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy.

France believes Mostefai, a petty criminal who never served time in jail, visited Syria in 2013-2014. His radicalization underlined the trouble police face trying to capture an elusive enemy raised in its own cities.

 

(Additional reporting by Laurence Frost, Maya Nikolaeva, Julien Ponthus, Patrick Vignal and David Brunnstrom; Writing by Paul Taylor and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

France police raid homes, vow it’s ‘just the beginning’

By Chine Labbé and Crispian Balmer

PARIS (Reuters) – Police raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across France overnight arresting 23 people, and investigators identified a Belgian national living in Syria as the possible mastermind behind Friday’s attacks in Paris.

Much of France came to a standstill at midday for a minute’s silence to remember the 129 killed in the co-ordinated suicide bombings and shootings. Metro trains stopped, pedestrians paused on pavements and office workers stood at their desks.

Prosecutors have identified five of the seven dead assailants — four Frenchmen and a foreigner fingerprinted in Greece last month. His role in the carnage has fueled speculation that Islamic State took advantage of a recent wave of refugees fleeing Syria to slip militants into Europe.

Police believe one attacker is on the run, and are working on the assumption that at least four people helped organize the mayhem, the worst atrocity in France since World War Two, which appears to have been organized in neighboring Belgium.

Belgian police arrested at least one person after a four-hour siege on Monday at a house in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, home to many Muslim immigrants, but failed to find a man believed to have played a key role in the assault.

“We know that more attacks are being prepared, not just against France but also against other European countries,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told RTL radio. “We are going to live with this terrorist threat for a long time.”

Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks in retaliation for French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, warned in a video on Monday that any country hitting it would suffer the same fate, promising specifically to target Washington.

French warplanes bombed Islamic State training camps and a suspected arms depot in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa late on Sunday — its biggest such strike since it started assaults as part of a U.S.-led mission launched in 2014.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters police had arrested nearly two dozen people and seized arms, including a rocket launcher and automatic weapons, in 168 raids overnight. Another 104 people were put under house arrest, he said.

“Let this be clear to everyone, this is just the beginning, these actions are going to continue,” Cazeneuve said.

 

NATIONAL MOURNING

A source close to the investigation said Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud, currently in Syria, was suspected of having ordered the Paris operation. “He appears to be the brains behind several planned attacks in Europe,” the source told Reuters.

RTL Radio said Abaaoud was a 27-year-old from Molenbeek. He was also reported by media to have been involved in a series of planned attacks in Belgium which were foiled by the police last January.

Police in Brussels have detained two suspects and are hunting Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman based in the Belgian capital, who is one of three brothers believed to have been involved in the plot.

Schools and museums in Paris re-opened on Monday after a 48-hour shutdown, but some popular tourist sites, including Disneyland and the Eiffel Tower, remained closed.

French tourism-related stocks fell sharply on fears visitors might shun Paris, one of the most visited cities in the world, but the country’s blue-chip CAC 40 index was steady, with no long-term economic impact seen.

Police have named two French attackers — Ismael Omar Mostefai, 29, from Chartres, southwest of Paris, and Samy Amimour, 28, from the Paris suburb of Drancy. A source close to the investigation named two other French assailants as Bilal Hadfi and Ibrahim Abdeslam.

A Turkish government official said Ankara had notified France twice in December 2014 and June 2015 about Mostefai, who entered Turkey in 2013 with no record of him leaving again. France only called back about him after Friday’s events.

“This is not a time to play the blame game, but we are compelled to share (this) information to shed light on (Mostefai’s) travel history,” the Turkish official said.

France now believes Mostefai was in Syria from 2013-2014 and his radicalization underlined the trouble France faces trying to capture an illusive enemy that grew up in its own cities.

“He was a normal man,” said Christophe, his neighbor in Chartres. “Nothing made you think he would turn violent.”

Latest official figures estimate that 520 French nationals are in the Syrian and Iraqi war zones, including 116 women. Some 137 have died in the fighting, 250 have returned home and around 700 have plans to travel to join the jihadist factions.

The man stopped in Greece in October was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Ahmad Al Mohammad. Police said they were still checking to see if the document was authentic, but said the dead man’s fingerprints matched those on record in Greece.

Greek officials said the passport holder had crossed from Turkey to the Greek islands last month and then registered for asylum in Serbia before heading north, following a route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers this year.

The news revived a furious row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of Middle Eastern and African refugees. Senior Polish and Slovak officials dismissed an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslims.

Britain announced on Monday it would boost its intelligence agency staff by 15 percent and more than double spending on aviation security to defend against Islamist militants plotting attacks from Syria.

A source in Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said police had foiled one attack in Britain last month.

Valls said the French authorities would use every means at their disposal to counter the Islamist threat, adding that mosques harboring extremists would be shuttered and foreigners expelled if they “held unacceptable views against the republic”.

France is home to some five million Muslims, many of them descendants from Algerian and Moroccan immigrants.

 

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, John Irish, Leigh Thomas, Ingrid Melander, Marine Pennetier, Geert De Clercq and Claire Watson in Paris; Yves Herman, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Philip Blenkinsop and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels; writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

ISIS Threatens Paris-style Attack on Washington D.C. and Other Countries

The Islamic State recently posted a video on one of their websites, claiming that more attacks like the one carried out in Paris would be executed in other countries contributing to strikes against ISIS in Syria, including the United States.

In fact, the Washington Post reports that ISIS specifically threatened to carry out an attack on Washington D.C. in the 11 minute video after showing new clips of the carnage in Paris.

“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington,” the man says, according to a translation from Reuters.

Another member of ISIS also threatened other European nations in the video.

“I say to the European countries that we are coming — coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and [gun] silencers and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before,” he said.

Reuters added that it was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the video.

Beirut Citizens Feel Overshadowed By Paris Attacks

On November 12th, a day before the French attacks, two suicide bombers  killed 43 people and wounded 239 more in the Lebanese capital in an ISIS-propagated murder. On the night of Friday the 13th, in Paris, at least 129 people  were killed and over 350 wounded by at least seven ISIS-connected assailants at a stadium, concert hall and in restaurants.

The Beirut bombings were the worst since Beirut’s civil war ended in 1990.  The attack was also claimed by ISIS or the Islamic State and took place in a neighborhood that was a stronghold for Hezbollah, which is fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar Assad.

The latest deadly attacks by ISIS on Paris are drawing millions of mourners from around the world, but some say it is overshadowing other ISIS attacks worthy of global attention.

“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog.

“When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

Social media also reflected the unfairness that many were feeling on the coverage of these tragic events, with many wondering where the prayers and flags were for the Lebanese people.

Although, there was outrage among some people, others believed it was due to the ongoing conflict in areas around Lebanon and the rarity of such incidents in Paris that led to the one-sided flood of support.

“In Lebanon we experience war and its consequences more than French people do,” Lebanese journalist Doja Daoud told Al Jazeera. “This is a humanitarian thing, the same terrorism that kills Lebanese people, Iraqis and Syrians, killed the French.”

“Anonymous” Hackers Declare War on ISIS

The hacker collective known as “Anonymous” declared war on ISIS in a video posted on YouTube in response to the horrendous attacks that took place in Paris on Friday.

According to NBC News, the video has yet to be verified by officials, but in the video a spokesman wears the group’s signature Guy Fawkes mask and says in French that the group will use their expertise in a “war” against the Islamic terrorist group.

“Expect massive cyber attacks. War is declared. Get prepared,” the announcer says in French.

“Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go. We will launch the biggest operation ever against you,” the spokesperson continued, according to translated transcripts of the video.

The spokesman continued to call the members of ISIS “vermin,” and that their actions would not go “unpunished.”

As of Monday at 8:30 a.m. Central Time, the video had accumulated 1.1 million views on YouTube, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The Huffington Post reports that the hacktivist group also posted on Twitter: “Make no mistake: Anonymous is at war with Daesh.” Daesh is another name for ISIS.

Anonymous is a group of international network of activist computer hackers who have claimed responsibility for numerous cyberattacks against corporate, religious, and government websites over the past 12 years. Since the Charlie Hebdo attack in January that led to the death of 17 people, Anonymous has been targeting and shutting down Twitter profiles believed to be used by ISIS and their supporters. The Jerusalem Post reports that the hacktivist group has reported more than 39,000 ISIS accounts to Twitter. Out of those, more than 25,000 have been suspended, but almost 14,000 are still active.

Islamic State claims Paris attacks that killed 127

By Ingrid Melander and Marine Pennetier

PARIS (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for a coordinated assault by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people at locations across Paris, which President Francois Hollande said amounted to an act of war against France.

In the worst attack, a Paris city hall official said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos launched an assault on the building. Dozens of survivors were rescued, and bodies were still being recovered on Saturday morning.

Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, the official said, including an apparent double suicide bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.

The assaults came as France, a founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks.

It was the worst such attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, in which 191 died.

Hollande said the attacks had been organized from abroad by Islamic State “barbarians”, with internal help. Sources close to the investigation said a Syrian passport had been found near the body of one of the suicide bombers.

“Faced with war, the country must take appropriate action,” Hollande said after an emergency meeting of security chiefs. He also announced three days of national mourning.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy added in a statement: “The war we must wage should be total.”

During a visit to Vienna, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said “we are witnessing a kind of medieval and modern fascism at the same time.”

In its claim of responsibility, Islamic State said the attacks were a response to France’s campaign against its fighters.

It also distributed an undated video in which a militant said France would not live peacefully as long it took part in U.S.-led bombing raids against them.

“As long as you keep bombing you will not live in peace. You will even fear traveling to the market,” said a bearded Arabic-speaking militant, flanked by other fighters.

A French government source told Reuters there were 127 dead, 67 in critical condition and 116 wounded. Six attackers blew themselves up and one was shot by police. There may have been an eighth attacker, but this was not confirmed.

The attacks, in which automatic weapons and explosives belts were used, lasted 40 minutes.

“The terrorists, the murderers, raked several cafe terraces with machine-gun fire before entering (the concert hall). There were many victims in terrible, atrocious conditions in several places,” police prefect Michel Cadot told reporters.

 

STATE OF EMERGENCY

After being whisked from the stadium near the blasts, Hollande declared a national state of emergency, the first since World War Two. Border controls were temporarily reimposed to stop perpetrators escaping.

Local sports events were suspended, department stores closed, the rock band U2 canceled a concert, and schools, universities and municipal buildings were ordered to stay shut on Saturday. Some rail and air services were expected to run.

Sylvestre, a young man who was at the Stade de France when bombs went off there, said he was saved by his cellphone, which he was holding to his ear when debris hit it.

“This is the cell phone that took the hit, it’s what saved me,” he said. “Otherwise my head would have been blown to bits,” he said, showing the phone with its screen smashed.

French newspapers spoke of “carnage” and “horror”. Le Figaro’s headline said: “War in the heart of Paris” on a black background with a picture of people on stretchers.

Emergency services were mobilized, police leave was canceled, 1,500 army reinforcements were drafted into the Paris region and hospitals recalled staff to cope with the casualties.

Radio stations warned Parisians to stay at home and urged residents to give shelter to anyone caught out in the street.

The deadliest attack was on the Bataclan, a popular concert venue where the Californian rock group Eagles of Death Metal was performing. Some witnesses in the hall said they heard the gunmen shout Islamic chants and slogans condemning France’s role in Syria.

The hall is near the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. France has been on high alert since Islamist gunmen attacked the paper and a kosher supermarket in January, killing 18 people.

Those attacks briefly united France in defense of freedom of speech, with a mass demonstration of more than a million people. But that unity has since broken down, with far-right populist Marine Le Pen gaining on both mainstream parties by blaming immigration and Islam for France’s security problems.

It was not clear what political impact the latest attacks would have less than a month before regional elections in which Le Pen’s National Front is set to make further advances.

The governing Socialist Party and the National Front suspended their election campaigns.

U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel led a global chorus of solidarity with France. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the “despicable attacks” while Pope Francis called the killings “inhuman”.

France ordered increased security at its sites abroad. Italy, Russia, Belgium, Hungary and the Netherlands also tightened security measures.

Poland, meanwhile, said that the attacks meant it could not now take its share of migrants under a European Union plan. Many of the migrants currently flooding into Europe are refugees from Syria.

Julien Pearce, a journalist from Europe 1 radio, was inside the concert hall when the shooting began. In an eyewitness report posted on the station’s website, Pearce said several very young individuals, who were not wearing masks, entered the hall during the concert, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and started “blindly shooting at the crowd”.

“There were bodies everywhere,” he said.

 

POINT-BLANK

The gunmen shot their victims in the back, finishing some off at point-blank range before reloading their guns and firing again, Pearce said, after escaping into the street by a stage door, carrying a wounded girl on his shoulder.

Toon, a 22-year-old messenger who lives near the Bataclan, was going into the concert hall with two friends at around 10.30 p.m. (2130 GMT) when he saw three young men dressed in black and armed with machine guns. He stayed outside.

One of the gunmen began firing into the crowd. “People were falling like dominoes,” he told Reuters. He saw people shot in the leg, shoulder and back, with several lying on the floor, apparently dead.

Two explosions were heard near the Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, where the France-Germany soccer match was being played. A witness said one of the detonations blew people into the air outside a McDonald’s restaurant opposite the stadium.

In central Paris, shooting erupted in mid-evening outside a Cambodian restaurant in the capital’s 10th district.

Eighteen people were killed when a gunman opened fire on Friday night diners sitting at outdoor terraces in the popular Charonne area nearby in the 11th district.

The prosecutor mentioned five locations in close proximity where shootings took place around the same time.

 

(Additional reporting by Geert de Clercq, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Emmanuel Jarry, Elizabeth Pineau, Julien Pretot and Bate Felix Tabi-Tabe; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

U.S. Officials Believe ISIS Leader “Jihadi John” Killed in U.S. Airstrikes

Multiple news agencies are reporting today that Islamic State leader “Jihadi John” was possibly killed during an airstrike in northern Syria led by the United States.

According to ABC News, a U.S. official stated that the jihadist, Mohammed Emwazi, was hit after leaving a building in Raqqa, Syria and entering a car. The official added that it was a “clean hit” where Emwazi was basically “evaporated.”

“U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria, on Nov. 12, 2015 targeting Mohammed Emwazi, also known as ‘Jihadi John,'” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

“Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages,” Cook said. “We are assessing the results of tonight’s operation and will provide additional information as and where appropriate.”

In the ISIS videos, Emwazi always wore all black, covering his entire body except his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He soon became a symbol of the Islamic State’s brutality after being featured many horrific videos where he killed innocent people in various, sadistic ways.

British Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the airstrike was a combined effort between the U.S. and Britain and was an act of self-defense, according to CNN.

“We always said we will do whatever is necessary to track down Emwazi and stop him taking the lives of others,” he said.

He added, “I want to thank the United States, the United Kingdom has no better ally.”

CNN adds that while officials are confident that Emwazi is dead, the Pentagon would not officially confirm his death at this time.

In another blow to ISIS, Reuters reports that Kurdish forces were able to seize back the Iraqi town of Sinjar back from the Islamic State on Friday. The Kurdish troops were able to take several of Sinjar’s public buildings including a cement factory, hospital, and wheat silo. Officials believe this win over the terrorist organization may give the Kurds the momentum needed to take back Mosul.

“The liberation of Sinjar will have a big impact on liberating Mosul,” Iraq Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani told reporters atop Mount Sinjar, overlooking the town.

The operation has not only liberated the town, but has cut off vital trade routes that ISIS used to move weapons, oil, fighters, and other commodities.