Tag Archives: Islamic State

Iraqis running out of food and medicine in besieged Fallujah

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of trapped Iraqi civilians are running out of food and medicine in the western city of Fallujah, an Islamic State stronghold under siege by security forces, according to local officials and residents.

The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias – backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition – late last year imposed a near total siege on Fallujah, located 30 miles west of Baghdad in the Euphrates river valley.

The city’s population is suffering from a shortage of food, medicine and fuel, residents and officials told Reuters by phone, and media reports said several people had died due to starvation and poor medical care. Insecurity and poor communications inside the city make those reports difficult to verify.

Sohaib al-Rawi, the governor of Anbar province where Fallujah is located, appealed to the coalition to air-drop humanitarian supplies to the trapped civilians. He said this was the only way to deliver aid after Islamic State mined the entrances to the city and stopped people leaving.

“No force can enter and secure (the delivery) … There is no option but for airplanes to transport aid,” he said in an interview with al-Hadath TV late on Monday, adding the situation was deteriorating by the day.

Fallujah – a long-time bastion of Sunni Muslim jihadists – was the first Iraqi city to fall to Islamic State, in January 2014, six months before the group that emerged from al Qaeda swept through large parts of northern and western Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Since recapturing the city of Ramadi – a further 50 km to the west – from Islamic State a month ago, Iraqi authorities have not made clear whether they will attempt to take Fallujah next or leave it contained while the bulk of their forces head north toward Mosul, the largest city under the militants’ control.

Falih al-Essawi, deputy chief of Anbar’s provincial council, said Islamic State had turned Falluja into “a huge detention center”.

“Security forces managed to control almost all areas around Falluja. This victory has helped to reduce Daesh (Islamic State) attacks outside the city, but it cost too much because civilians now are paying the price,” he said from Ramadi, warning of a potential humanitarian disaster.

A doctor at a hospital in Fallujah said medicine and supplies were running low, especially for post-natal care.

“What is the sin of those born after living in their mothers’ womb without nutrition or protection except from God?” she said.

Spokesmen for the Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias besieging Fallujah were not immediately available to comment.

FREEZING WINTER

The U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State estimates there are around 400 fighters from the ultra-hardline Sunni militant group in Fallujah, though some military analysts put the figure at closer to 1,000.

The coalition, which includes European and Arab powers, dropped food and water in 2014 to members of Iraq’s minority Yazidi community trapped on Mount Sinjar by Islamic State – a humanitarian crisis that sparked the international air campaign.

A Baghdad-based spokesman for the coalition did not rule out a similar operation in Fallujah but said Islamic State’s control of the city made it more challenging.

“The thing about an air-drop is it’s very difficult to control who gets it,” said U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren. “The conditions have to be such that the people who you want to receive the supplies are actually able to receive them and there’s no evidence that that’s the case in Fallujah.”

Rawi, the provincial governor, said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields in Falluja like it did in Ramadi – a tactic that slowed the advance of Iraqi forces.

He said media reports of up to 10 deaths due to starvation and insufficient medical care were accurate, but local officials could not provide details.

The price of food in Fallujah’s markets has rocketed and bakeries have begun rationing bread, residents told Reuters. They said fuel had become scarce during the cold winter months when temperatures drop close to freezing.

One man, who like the other residents declined to be named, said the last time Islamic State distributed basic food items a few weeks ago, much of it had already gone off.

Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, described conditions in Falluja as “terrible”.

“We’re incredibly worried about the unconfirmed reports of people dying because of lack of medicine and widespread hunger,” she told Reuters.

The United Nations appealed on Sunday for $861 million to help Iraq meet a big funding gap in its 2016 emergency response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war against Islamic State which has left 10 million people in need of urgent aid.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed; Editing by Pravin Char)

Accused ISIS plotter in North Carolina charged with earlier murder

(Reuters) – A North Carolina man was indicted on Monday in the murder of a 74-year-old neighbor police said he killed months before federal authorities arrested him on allegations that he planned mass shootings to support Islamic State militants.

Justin Nojan Sullivan, 19, of Morganton, North Carolina, is charged with murder in the December 2014 slaying of John Bailey Clark, said Burke County District Attorney David Learner.

Sullivan also faces seven federal charges related to supporting Islamic State and plotting murders, according to an 11-page federal indictment unsealed Monday. He faces trial on those charges later this month.

Islamic State is a militant group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq and has vowed attacks on the West.

“Justin Sullivan had elaborate plans to kill hundreds of innocent people to show his support for the terrorist organization, ISIL,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge John A. Strong.

The first-degree state murder charge is punishable by life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

The federal charges range in punishment from 20 years in prison for attempting help Islamic State to eight years for lying to a federal agency.

Attorneys for Sullivan could not be reached.

The FBI began tracking Sullivan in September 2014 after his parents, with whom he was living, told police he supported Islamic State and was destroying Buddhist objects at home.

In December, 2014, Clark was killed with the .22-caliber rifle later identified as one that Sullivan stole from his father and hid under their house, according to the indictment.

Beginning on June 6, 2015, Sullivan began talking about his Islamic State loyalties with an undercover federal agent Sullivan took for a fellow supporter.

“I liked IS from the beginning then I started thinking about death and stuff so I became Muslim,” Sullivan told the agent, according to the indictment.

Over the next two weeks, Sullivan told the agent that he wanted to kill hundreds or thousands with an assault rifle and silencer, and planned to practice killing with minor assassinations, the indictment said.

He instructed the agent to obtain weapons, had the agent make and mail him a silencer to use, planned to buy an AR-15 at a gun show and tried to buy hollow-point bullets.

When his parents questioned him about the silencer, he tried to hire the agent to kill them, the indictment said.

He was arrested in late June 2015 and remains in federal custody, authorities said.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein and Karen Brooks; Editing by David Gregorio)

Pentagon to hike spending request to fund fight versus Islamic State

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s administration will seek a significant increase in funding for the fight against Islamic State as part of its 2017 defense budget request, U.S. officials say, in another possible sign of U.S. efforts to intensify the campaign.

The fiscal year 2017 Pentagon budget will call for more than $7 billion for the fight against Islamic State, a roughly 35 percent increase compared with the previous year’s request to Congress, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is due to disclose his spending priorities for the $583 billion 2017 defense budget on Tuesday in an address to the Economic Club of Washington. The White House plans to release Obama’s full budget proposal for fiscal 2017, which begins Oct. 1, on Feb. 9.

Carter in his speech is expected to cite his intent to increase the administration’s request for funds to battle Islamic State, officials say, although it was unclear how much detail he would offer.

He was also expected to touch on other budget priorities, including plans to increase spending to reassure European allies following Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, and the need for the United States to maintain its military edge over China and Russia.

Carter’s budget will underscore the need for Washington to fund a new Air Force bomber awarded last year to Northrop Grumman Corp, a replacement for the Ohio-class submarines that carry nuclear weapons, and to start replacing a fleet of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to a source briefed on the plans.

The proposed budget will also seek to boost spending for several key priorities, including increased cybersecurity, electronic warfare and increased security for crucial U.S. satellites, the source said.

Lockheed Martin Corp, maker of the F-35 fighter jet, Boeing Co and other big weapons makers are anxiously awaiting details about the budget and how it will affect their programs.

Senior defense officials have said that $15 billion in cuts required under a two-year budget agreement with Congress last year would largely come from procurement accounts since personnel costs and operations costs were harder to cut.

One official noted that spending on the Islamic State fight was expected to be drawn from the roughly $59 billion Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, a separate budget that supplements the larger, $524 billion base budget for fiscal year 2017.

Still, key details on the more than $7 billion request were unclear, including whether the funding applied to operations outside Iraq and Syria.

The disclosure about plans for an increased spending request to combat Islamic State came as the Obama administration seeks to intensify its campaign, looking to capitalize on recent battlefield gains against the militants in Iraq.

Carter has called a meeting later this month in Brussels with defense ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq. He is asking them to come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Andrea Shalal; Editing by James Dalgleish)

U.S. weighs options to speed Iraq’s fight to retake Mosul

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is willing to deploy Apache attack helicopters and advisers to help Iraq retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State as it considers options to speed up the campaign against the militant group, a top U.S. general said on Monday.

U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama, have said they want to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State militants, and have called on allies to increase their military contributions to efforts to destroy the group in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, the head of the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said he is looking to retake Mosul as quickly as possible, but did not say whether he agreed with Iraqi estimates that it could be wrested from Islamic State control by the end of this year.

“I don’t want to put a date out there,” MacFarland said. “I would like to get this wrapped up as fast as I possibly can.”

Past steps to speed up the campaign have included the deployment of dozens of U.S. special operations forces in northern Syria, and an elite targeting force to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets.

It could also include deployment of more military and police trainers, including from the United States. MacFarland said the U.S.-led coalition has trained more than 17,500 Iraqi soldiers, and about 2,000 police, with another 3,000 soldiers and police in training now.

MacFarland said the proposals he is drawing up do not necessarily require the commitment of more U.S. troops, who have largely stayed away from the front lines of combat. Instead, coalition partners could contribute troops, he said.

“As we extend operations across Iraq and into Syria … there is a good potential that we’ll need additional capabilities, additional forces to provide those capabilities and we’re looking at the right mix,” MacFarland said.

The United States is also ready to send Apache attack helicopters and deploy advisers to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces retake Mosul if requested, MacFarland said. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in December that the United States was ready to send the advisers and helicopters if requested by Iraq to help in the fight to retake Ramadi, but Iraqi officials did not ask for the extra help.

Iraqi forces retook Ramadi, a provincial capital just a short drive west of Baghdad, late last year.

“We can’t inflict help on somebody, they have to ask for it, they have to want it, and we’re here to provide it as required,” MacFarland said. “Everything that the secretary said is really still on the table.”

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Coalition now training brigades that will fight ISIS in Mosul, spokesman says

The United States-led coalition against the Islamic State is currently helping the Iraqi Security Forces put together the force that will try to retake the city of Mosul, a spokesman said Friday.

Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, made the announcement while addressing a news briefing in Washington. He was speaking via video link from Baghdad.

Warren told reporters it would still be “many months” before the Iraqi Security Forces began their campaign to recapture Mosul, which the Islamic State has occupied since June 2014.

“Right now our focus is ‘Let’s start training some brigades. Let’s start building some combat power. Let’s continue to train some police and start building up some combat power,’” he said.

Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province in northern Iraq and is one of the nation’s largest cities.

Warren told reporters the coalition still needs to assemble approximately 10 brigades, consisting of some 2,000 to 3,000 people in all, and wanted to first place them through additional training.

A basic training process takes eight weeks, Warren told reporters, with supplemental options for people like medics or snipers. But the number of troops that can be trained at once has varied.

“Over the last month or so, we’ve gotten about 900 police officers and roughly two brigades through training,” Warren told reporters. “This was the most graduates that we’ve had in a month. There’s been weeks or months where it’s been significantly less.”

He said the coalition has trained about 20,000 members of the Iraqi Security Forces, including police and tribal fighters. But he said even the ones who helped secure a key victory at Ramadi, a city that had been under Islamic State control, should receive additional training before Mosul.

“We believe that all of the forces that we’ve already trained and run through Ramadi are certainly capable of moving to Mosul, but we have made a decision that we want to run them through another cycle of training,” Warren told reporters. “Are they trained? Yes. Could they go to Mosul now? Yes. But we would prefer to give them additional training before they go.”

Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was captured by the Islamic State last year.

Iraqi officials announced that the military had raised the nation’s flag over a key government complex in Ramadi late in December, and forces have been working to secure outlying parts of the city ever since. On Friday, Warren told reporters that those efforts were continuing.

Warren also told reporters the coalition launched 676 airstrikes against the Islamic State in January, 522 of them in Iraq and 154 in Syria. Most of them were concentrated near Ramadi, Mosul and Raqqa, the Syrian city which the Islamic State considers its capital.

Man who allegedly gave hacked personal info to Islamic State appears in court

A man accused of hacking the personal information of more than 1,300 federal employees and military members and releasing them to the Islamic State made his first appearance in a United States court on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

Ardit Ferizi, a 20-year-old Kosovo citizen, faces charges related to terrorism, hacking and identity theft, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Ferizi was living in Malaysia last October when local law enforcement detained him at the United States’ request, prosecutors said. He later waived extradition.

According to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Ferizi is believed to be the leader of a Kosovar hacking group. He’s accused of hacking a United States-based online retailer’s server, stealing the personal information of about 100,000 people and then sending the data of 1,351 military personnel and federal employees to members of the Islamic State.

A pro-Islamic State Twitter account posted a link to the information in August, prosecutors allege, and “names, e-mail addresses, e-mail passwords, locations and phone numbers” of the 1,351 employees were visible in a 30-page document that included a warning message.

According to the complaint, part of the document stated: “we are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!”

Court records indicate charges against Ferizi include providing material support to the Islamic State, unauthorized access to a computer and aggravated identity theft.

If convicted, prosecutors said he could face up to 35 years in prison.

“As alleged, Ardit Ferizi is a terrorist hacker who provided material support to ISIL by stealing the personally identifiable information of U.S. service members and federal employees and providing it to ISIL for use against those employees,” Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin said in a statement released after Ferizi was arrested in October. “This case is a first of its kind and, with these charges, we seek to hold Ferizi accountable for his theft of this information and his role in ISIL’s targeting of U.S. government employees.”

Ferizi is the latest individual who has been charged with Islamic State-related crimes in the United States. In December, a report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism said at least 71 individuals were accused of such offenses since March 2014.

Syrian al Qaeda affiliate ‘much more dangerous’ than ISIS, new report says

While the United States continues its military campaign against the Islamic State, a new report charges that a different terrorist organization poses a greater long-term threat to the country.

Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, “is much more dangerous to the U.S. than the ISIS model in the long run,” according to a report released Friday by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute.

“Any strategy that leaves Jabhat al Nusra in place will fail to secure the American homeland,” the report cautions.

The report offers a scathing critique of the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq and Syria, saying the military campaign “largely ignores” Jabhat al Nusra, a group that “will almost certainly cause the current strategy in Syria to fail.”

It also argues the challenges facing the United States have been oversimplified, and warns a “collapse of world order” could allow the Islamic State and al Qaeda to grow stronger.

The report’s authors argue the United States must choose a new strategy, writing “passivity abroad will facilitate the continued collapse of the international order, including the global economy on which American prosperity and the American way of life depend.”

According to the report, Jabhat al Nusra differs from the Islamic State in its ideologies and practices. While the Islamic States seizing cities and imposes its will on civilians, brutally mistreating anyone who dissents, Jabhat al Nusra has taken a friendlier approach. It has aligned with several groups that oppose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a key point of contention in the nation’s ongoing civil war, and provided those groups with “advanced military capabilities.”

In doing so, the report says Jabhat al Nusra “has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization.” The institutes charge the front has become so engaged with the opposition, it’s now “poised to benefit the most” from the downfall of the Islamic State and Assad’s removal.

“The likeliest outcome of the current strategy in Syria, if it succeeds, is the de facto establishment and ultimate declaration of a Jabhat al Nusra emirate in Syria that has the backing of a wide range of non-al Qaeda fighting forces and population groups,” the report states. Such an emirate would be a key component of al Qaeda’s global terror network, providing manpower and resources to other affiliates while “exporting violence into the heart of the West.”

The report calls al Qaeda and the Islamic State “existential threats” to Europe and the United States, and concludes that while the groups don’t currently have the ability to topple the West, they — along with broader turmoil in the world — threaten the way of life in those nations.

The report argues there are several public misconceptions about national security in the United States, namely that the Islamic State is the nation’s only enemy. The situation is far more complex, the report argues, and stretches far beyond the borders of the Middle East.

Groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are benefitting from events such as North Korea’s nuclear testing, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis, the report’s authors wrote, calling them “symptoms of a collapsing world order” that exacerbate the threat.

Conflicting policies of Iran, Russia and China have also helped fuel the collapse, the report says.

“The collapse of world order creates the vacuums that allow … organizations such as al Qaeda and ISIS to amass resources to plan and conduct attacks on scales that could overwhelm any defenses the United States might raise,” the report states. “Even a marginal increase in such attacks could provoke Western societies to impose severe controls on the freedoms and civil liberties of their populations that would damage the very ideals that must most be defended.”

Leading Iraqi Shi’ite says Islamic State is shrugging off U.S. air strikes

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Flush with cash and weapons, Islamic State is attracting huge numbers of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria and withstanding U.S.-led air strikes that are failing to hit the right targets, a powerful Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitary leader told Reuters in an interview.

Hadi al-Amiri also said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive and in Iraq, despite reports that he had been wounded.

“Many of its leadership have been killed but one should know that Daesh (IS) is still strong,” said Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization whose armed wing has been fighting alongside Iraqi security forces to recapture territory seized by IS.

“Their attacks are still daring and swift and their morale is high. They still have money and weapons.”

Amiri delivered a damning assessment of the air strikes that the United States and its allies have been conducting against Islamic State for almost 18 months.

He said these had failed to dislodge IS because they failed to target its vital structure. Diplomats say the United States has been held back partly by the difficulty of avoiding civilian casualties.

“Today Daesh is a state, it has command centers, their locations are known, their logistics are known,” Amiri said. “Its leadership is known, its military convoys are known, its training camps are known. Until now we have not seen effective air strikes.”

He said the ultra-hardline insurgents had secured sophisticated U.S.-made anti-tank weapons including TOW missiles through Gulf Arab states. And he ridiculed the idea that Western powers could ensure arms only reached moderate rebel groups.

“They (rebels) did not capture these missiles, they were supplied by America, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states under the pretext of arming the moderate opposition in Syria. Who is the moderate opposition? Ahrar al-Sham? Jaish al-Islam? Nusra or Daesh?” he asked, reeling off the names of competing Islamist factions.

“All of them are terrorists,” he said. “Any moderate factions in Syria are weak. Even if they are supplied with weapons, Daesh seizes them.”

Military aid from states including Saudi Arabia has been supplied to Syrian rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army in western Syria, and some of these groups have received military training from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The training has included how to use TOW missiles, supplied via Turkey and Jordan.

GOVERNMENT FIGHTBACK

Shi’ite paramilitaries like Amiri’s have played a vital role in helping Iraqi security forces recover lost territory from IS, which seized a string of major cities in 2014. When the militants declared that year that they had established an Islamic caliphate across parts of Iraq and Syria, he left a senior government post and rushed to the frontlines.

Since then, the government forces and their paramilitary allies have regained control of key cities — Tikrit, Ramadi and Baiji — with the support of the U.S.-led air strikes.

But he said there were more obstacles ahead before they could launch a battle to recapture Mosul, the country’s second city and the biggest under Islamic State control. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his predecessor have long pledged to “liberate” Mosul but their plans have been repeatedly delayed.

“There are preparatory operations to retake Mosul but other operations have a priority. We want to go to Mosul with the reassurance that Baghdad is safe and all the provinces in the north and the south are safe. This is the main reason that delayed us advancing toward Mosul,” Amiri said.

“We have a decision not to enter the city of Mosul. We will surround it from outside and leave its people and its tribes to take part while we conduct the siege.”

SECTARIAN SPLIT

Amiri said Sunni-Shi’ite tensions galvanized by the war in Iraq and neighboring Syria were swelling the ranks of Islamic State.

The bombing of a Shi’ite shrine housing the tombs of two imams in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 2006 was the trigger for the worst sectarian carnage to engulf Iraq in the past decade, and now the Syria conflict has splintered the Middle East along the faultline dividing the two main denominations of Islam.

Syria has become a battlefield in a proxy war between President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally, Shi’ite Iran, backed by Russia, and his Sunni enemies in Turkey and Gulf Arab states, supported by the West.

“There is no terrorist organization with the ability to recruit and organize youths like Daesh does. We should know our enemy accurately and precisely to be able to defeat them,” Amiri said.

“Daesh has no problem recruiting. Foreign fighters are still flocking in huge numbers to Iraq and Syria via Turkey,” he added. He accused Saudi Arabia of being the breeding ground of the ultra-hardline Wahhabi ideology embraced by IS and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

“Where does this fundamentalist, extremist Islamist ideology, come from? Where was it nurtured? Its origin is Saudi Arabia,” he said, adding “we need to combat this (Daesh) ideology before we dry out its funding.”

Amiri’s Badr fighters fought on Iran’s side in the 1980-88 war against Iraq’s Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein. The militia came to dominate much of southern Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam, and during the sectarian fighting that followed.

“I fought Saddam Hussein for more than 20 years. If I knew the alternative to Saddam was al Qaeda, Nusra or Daesh, I would have fought with Saddam against them,” he said.

“Saddam executed more than 16 family members … but there is nothing worse than these extremist groups. They are a real danger to the whole world.”

(Writing by Samia Nakhoul and Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Islamic State bombing kills at least two dozen in Syria’s Homs

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb attack claimed by Islamic State in the Syrian government-controlled city of Homs killed at least 24 people on Tuesday.

The governor of Homs said the first of two explosions was caused by a car bomb which targeted a security checkpoint. A suicide bomber then set off an explosive belt, state media reported.

“We know we are targets for terrorists, especially now the (Syrian) army is advancing and local reconciliation agreements are being implemented,” the governor told Reuters by phone.

Seventeen people are still in hospital, one of whom is in a critical condition, the governor said.

Syrian state TV earlier reported 22 people had died and more than 100 people had been injured.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 29. It said those killed in the explosions, which took place in a mostly Alawite district, included 15 members of government forces and pro-government militiamen.

Syria’s nearly five-year-old civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and jihadi fighters.

Islamic State said in a statement its attack had killed at least 30 people.

The Syrian army and allied forces have been battling Islamic State in areas to the east and southeast of Homs city. They recently took back several villages including Maheen 50 miles southeast of the city.

(Reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

Islamic State possibly planning more attacks in Europe, Europol warns

The Islamic State is believed to be planning additional terrorist attacks against targets in France and the European Union, according to a new report from the union’s law enforcement agency.

Europol issued a public report on the Islamic State on Monday, writing “there is every reason to expect” the organization, or those inspired by it, would carry out another attack. The agency also wrote there’s a chance of attacks from lone-actor terrorists, or other religiously inspired groups.

The report, which does not mention a specific future terrorist threat, draws its conclusions from a meeting of more than 50 counterterrorism officials from throughout the European Union. The discussions were held November 30 and December 1, a little more than two weeks after the Islamic State killed 130 people during Nov. 13 terrorist attacks at various locations across Paris.

The report highlights what Europol believes is an adjustment in the Islamic State’s game plan.

It indicates the Paris attacks, as well as the investigation into them, “appear to indicate a shift towards a broader strategy of (the Islamic State) going global,” and evidence suggests the group is planning “special forces style attacks” in foreign countries. It warns of the possibility of additional attacks against France, or other European Union nations, “in the near future.”

It was released the same day that Europol opened its European Counter Terrorism Centre in The Hague, Netherlands. In a news release announcing the opening, Europol said the continent “is currently facing the most significant terrorist threat in over 10 years,” and the center would help officials share terrorism intelligence and coordinate responses to any potential acts of violence.

The report offers insight into Europol’s intelligence on the Islamic State’s recruitment, training, financing and planning methods.

It addresses public fears that terrorists are exploiting the ongoing migrant crisis to enter Europe, in some cases posing as refugees to get into the union undetected. The report says there is “no concrete evidence” that terrorists are systematically using the refugee system that way, though acknowledged it’s possible some Syrian refugees “may be vulnerable” to radicalization.

The report also outlines how quickly the Islamic State can recruit foreigners — particularly younger people, who can be more impressionable and vulnerable. It indicates 20 percent or more of the Islamic State’s foreign fighters had been diagnosed with a mental problem before joining the group, and up to 80 percent of the foreign fighters had some kind of criminal record.

Europol’s report indicated that attacks aren’t necessarily coordinated from Syria, an Islamic State stronghold, and that the leaders of local cells are given “tactical freedom” to make adjustments as they see fit. It notes the Islamic State’s documented ability to “strike at will,” but noted the group has a preference for attacking soft targets — those unable to defend themselves — to kill as many people as possible.

The report noted similarities between the Paris attacks and attacks against Mumbai in 2008, as both had comparable targets, weapons and death tolls.

Europol says cyber attacks or plots against power grids or similar targets “is currently not a priority” for the Islamic State, though the report indicates it’s possible the organization could pursue “cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructures and state security” against Western nations in the future.