Tag Archives: Islamic Terrorism

Suicide bomber kills at least 22, including children, at Ariana Grande concert in Britain

People walk out of a support centre at Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, Manchester, Britain, May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jon Super

By Michael Holden and Andrew Yates

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least 22 people and wounded 59 at a packed concert hall in the English city of Manchester in what Prime Minister Theresa May called a sickening act targeting children and young people.

May said police believed they knew the identity of the bomber and police then said a 23-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the attack carried out late on Monday evening as people began leaving a concert given by Ariana Grande, a U.S. singer who attracts a large number of young and teenage fans.

“All acts of terrorism are cowardly…but this attack stands out for its appalling sickening cowardice, deliberately targeting innocent, defenseless children and young people who should have been enjoying one of the most memorable nights of their lives,” May said outside her Downing Street office in London.

“The attempt to divide us met countless acts of kindness that brought people closer together.”

The northern English city remained on high alert. A Reuters witnesses said they heard a “big bang” at Manchester’s Arndale shopping mall and saw people running from the building. Police said they were dealing with an incident inside. The shopping center reopened soon afterward, a Reuters witness said.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said more police had been ordered onto the streets of the British capital.

Monday’s attack was the deadliest in Britain since four British Muslims killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London’s transport system in 2005. But it will have reverberations far beyond British shores.

Attacks in cities including Paris, Nice, Brussels, St Petersburg, Berlin and London have shocked Europeans already anxious over security challenges from mass immigration and pockets of domestic Islamist radicalism. The Islamic State militant group has called for attacks as retaliation for Western involvement in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Witnesses related the horror of the Manchester blast, which unleashed a stampede just as the concert ended at what is Europe’s largest indoor arena, full to a capacity of 21,000.

“We ran and people were screaming around us and pushing on the stairs to go outside and people were falling down, girls were crying, and we saw these women being treated by paramedics having open wounds on their legs … it was just chaos,” said Sebastian Diaz, 19. “It was literally just a minute after it ended, the lights came on and the bomb went off.”

U.S. President Donald Trump described the attack as the work of “evil losers”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it “will only strengthen our resolve to…work with our British friends against those who plan and carry out such inhumane deeds.”

A source with knowledge of the situation said the bomber’s explosives were packed with metal and bolts. At least 19 of those wounded were in a critical condition, the source said.

A video posted on Twitter showed fans, many of them young, screaming and running from the venue. Dozens of parents frantically searched for their children, posting photos and pleading for information on social media.

“We were making our way out and when we were right by the door there was a massive explosion and everybody was screaming,” concert-goer Catherine Macfarlane told Reuters.

“It was a huge explosion – you could feel it in your chest.”

Singer Ariana Grande, 23, said on Twitter: “broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.” May, who faces an election in two-and-a-half weeks, said her thoughts were with the victims and their families. She and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, agreed to suspend campaigning ahead of the June 8 vote.

SUICIDE BOMBER?

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, but U.S. officials drew parallels to the coordinated attacks in November 2015 by Islamist militants on the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris that killed 130 people.

“It clearly bears the hallmark of Daesh (Islamic State),” said former French intelligence agent Claude Moniquet, now a Brussels-based security consultant, “because Ariana Grande is a young singer who attracts a very young audience, teenagers.

“So very clearly the aim was to do as much harm as possible, to shock British society as much as possible.”

Islamic State supporters took to social media to celebrate the blast and some encouraged similar attacks elsewhere.

Britain is on its second-highest alert level of “severe”, meaning an attack by militants is considered highly likely.

British counter-terrorism police have said they are making on average an arrest every day in connection with suspected terrorism.

In March, a British-born convert to Islam plowed a car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge, killing four people before stabbing to death a police officer who was on the grounds of parliament. The man was shot dead at the scene.

In 2015, Pakistani student Abid Naseer was convicted in a U.S. court of conspiring with al Qaeda to blow up the Arndale shopping center in the center of Manchester in April 2009.

PARENTS’ ANGUISH

Desperate parents and friends used social media to search for loved ones who attended Monday’s concert while the wounded were being treated at six hospitals across Manchester.

“Everyone pls share this, my little sister Emma was at the Ari concert tonight in #Manchester and she isn’t answering her phone, pls help me,” said one message posted alongside a picture of a blonde girl with flowers in her hair.

Paula Robinson, 48, from West Dalton about 40 miles east of Manchester, said she was at the train station next to the arena with her husband when she felt the explosion and saw dozens of teenage girls screaming and running away from arena.

“We ran out,” Robinson told Reuters. “It was literally seconds after the explosion. I got the teens to run with me.”

Robinson took dozens of teenage girls to the nearby Holiday Inn Express hotel and tweeted out her phone number to worried parents, telling them to meet her there. She said her phone had not stopped ringing since her tweet.

“Parents were frantic running about trying to get to their children,” she said. “There were lots of lots children at Holiday Inn.”

(Additional Reporting by Alistair Smout, Kate Holton, David Milliken, Elizabeth Piper, Paul Sandle and Costas Pitas in LONDON, Mark Hosenball in LOS ANGELES, John Walcott in WASHINGTON, D.C., Leela de Kretser in NEW YORK, Mostafa Hashem in CAIRO, and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Nick Tattersall; Editing by Ralph Boulton/Mark Heinrich)

Chibok girl escapes Boko Haram, says Nigeria’s presidency

A group of 82 Chibok girls, who were held captive for three years by Islamist militants, wait to be released in exchange for several militant commanders, near Kumshe, Nigeria May 6, 2017. REUTERS/Zanah Mustapha

ABUJA (Reuters) – Another Nigerian schoolgirl from the kidnapped group known as the “Chibok girls” has escaped from her captivity by Islamist insurgency Boko Haram, a presidential spokesman said on Wednesday.

The escape makes her the latest to return of the roughly 270 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in April 2014 from the northeastern town of Chibok. Earlier this month, the militants swapped 82 of the girls in exchange for prisoners.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at a cabinet meeting in the capital Abuja on Wednesday “announced that another Chibok schoolgirl had been found after she escaped from her captors,” said the spokesman.

“I learned she is already being brought to Abuja,” he said, giving no further details.

Of the 270 girls originally kidnapped, around 60 have escaped and more than 100 have been released. About 100 more are still believed to be in captivity.

Boko Haram’s insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced more than two million since 2009 in an attempt to create an Islamic caliphate in northeastern Nigeria.

Three years ago, the abduction of the girls from their secondary school by Boko Haram sparked global outrage and a celebrity-backed campaign #bringbackourgirls.

For more than two years there was no sign of the girls. But the discovery of one of them with a baby last May raised hopes for their safety, with a further two girls found in later months and a group of 21 released by the Islamist militants in October.

Although the Chibok girls are the most high-profile case, Boko Haram has kidnapped thousands of adults and children, many of whose cases are neglected, say aid organization’s.

The group often uses those captives, especially young girls and women, as suicide bombers.

(Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Islamic State kills villagers as fighting with Syrian army rages near highway

Brooklyn man sentenced to 15 years prison over Islamic State support

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State attacked a village near the main road between Aleppo and Homs on Thursday, killing many residents, Syrian state media and a war monitor said.

The jihadist group has lost large swathes of territory recently in Syria after expanding rapidly in 2014 and 2015, and is under assault from a U.S.-backed coalition of Arab and Kurdish militias as well as by the army, backed by Russia.

However, it still mounts occasional counter attacks including a swift advance in December to capture Palmyra, which it held for several weeks before the army retook the city.

The insurgents said on a social media feed it had captured the village of Aqarib al-Safi, but the government-run SANA news agency reported that the attack had been repulsed.

SANA said Islamic State fighters had killed 20 people in the village before the army and allied militia drove them away. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that clashes were still going on there and in the village of al-Saboura.

The Observatory said that at least 34 people, including both civilians and fighters on both sides, had been killed and that dozens had been injured.

Many of the people who live in that part of Syria belong to the Ismaili sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, and would be regarded by Islamic State as infidels. In 2015, Islamic State killed 46 civilians in a nearby town, the Observatory said.

The Observatory, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said that at least 15 of those killed were civilians, five of them children, and that three of them died in execution-style killings.

The villages are north of al-Salamiya close to the only road still useable between Aleppo and other parts of Syria held by the government.

The army and its allies hold the road and a small strip of land on each side, with Islamic State controlling the eastern area and Syrian rebel groups, including hardline Islamists, the western area.

The Observatory said the attack was the most violent so far this year by Islamic State on the road.

Syria’s civil war began in 2011 after mass protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and has killed hundreds of thousands of people, driven half the country’s population from their homes and dragged in world powers.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Iraq says battle for Mosul nearly won as forces close in on Old City

Displaced Iraqis flee during clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces have dislodged Islamic State from all but 12 square km of Mosul, a military spokesman said on Tuesday, after planes dropped leaflets into the city telling civilians the battle was nearly won.

Seven months into the U.S.-backed campaign, the militants now control only a few districts in the western half of Mosul including the Old City, where Islamic State is expected to make its last stand.

The Iraqi government is pushing to declare victory by the holy month of Ramadan, expected to begin on May 27, even if pockets of resistance remain in the Old City, according to military commanders.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces said the enemy was completely surrounded in the city and its fighters and resources were being destroyed.

“The enemy is on the brink of total defeat in Mosul,” U.S. Air Force Colonel John Dorrian told a news conference in Baghdad.

With the help of advisers and air strikes by the coalition, Iraqi forces have made rapid gains since opening a new front in the northwest of Mosul earlier this month, closing in on the Old City.

The Old City’s warren of densely packed houses and alleys is the most complex battleground and home to the al-Nuri mosque from which Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria in 2014.

“We reassure everyone that … in a very short time, God willing, we will declare the liberation and clearing of west Mosul and raise the Iraqi flag over … the Old City,” said spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool.”

Outnumbered, the militants have snipers embedded among the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in west Mosul. Many people have been killed by militants or heavy bombardments.

The leaflet dropped over Mosul also ordered civilians to immediately stop using any vehicle to avoid being mistaken for militants who have fought back against Iraqi forces with suicide car bombs and motorcycle bombs.

“Our airforce and Iraqi military planes will strike any vehicle that moves on the streets of these districts from the evening of May 15 until their liberation,” read a copy of the leaflet seen by Reuters. “The decisive hour has approached”.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Islamic State leader in Egypt tells Muslims to avoid Christian gatherings

People react to Christian deaths

CAIRO (Reuters) – Islamic State’s leader in Egypt has warned Muslims to stay away from Christian gatherings as well as government, military and police facilities, suggesting that the militant group will keep up attacks on what he referred to as “legitimate targets”.

In April, two Islamic State suicide bombers killed at least 45 people at churches in the cities of Alexandria and Tanta, one of the bloodiest attacks the country has experienced in years.

“We are warning you to stay away from Christian gatherings, as well as the gatherings of the army and the police, and the areas that have political government facilities,” the leader, who was not named, said in an interview in Islamic State’s Al Naba weekly newspaper published on Telegram.

Islamist militants are increasingly targeting religious minorities, a challenge to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has promised to protect them from extremism.

Islamic State has been turning its sights on targets outside its base in the Sinai, putting more pressure on the government and presenting extra challenges for security services.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem; Writing by Maha El Dahan; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Uzbekistan says uncovering militants daily among returning migrants

Uzbek Interior Minister Abdusalom Azizov attends a news conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, April 2, 2017. REUTERS/Muhammadsharif Mamatkulov

TASHKENT (Reuters) – Uzbekistan’s police routinely uncover militant Islamists among Uzbek migrants returning home and plan to expose those who remain abroad via social networks, Interior Minister Abdusalom Azizov said on Tuesday.

An Uzbek asylum seeker has been charged by a Swedish court over a deadly truck attack in Stockholm last month that put Uzbekistan, a largely Muslim Central Asian nation, in the global spotlight. Five people were killed in the attack.

“I will not hide the fact that almost every day we uncover people … who have returned (from abroad) and start spreading the Wahhabi ideology here,” Azizov told reporters, referring to the ultra-conservative strand of Islam that inspires some militant groups and is banned in Uzbekistan.

“There are many attempts (to spread it in Uzbekistan), but so far we are stopping them all,” he added.

Azizov said most Islamist suspects returning to Uzbekistan had been radicalized while living abroad, “in Russia, Turkey, other countries”.

Uzbekistan, which battled armed Islamists on its own soil in the 1990s, said last month it had tipped off a western nation before the Stockholm attack that Rakhmat Akilov, the suspected perpetrator, was an Islamic State recruit.

It did not say which nation it had contacted about Akilov.

Tashkent’s poor human rights track record under its late president Islam Karimov limited its security cooperation with the West. But Shavkat Mirziyoyev, elected president last year following Karimov’s death, has overseen the release of several political prisoners, winning praise from Washington.

“But in some countries, including Sweden, our (suspected radicals) are treated as refugees,” said Azizov.

He added that his ministry planned to publish a wanted list of Uzbek militants on social networks to help draw them to the attention of potential foreign employers and landlords.

Azizov did not say how many Uzbek nationals were returning home or how many of them were suspected militants.

(Reporting by Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Bomb in northern Syria kills five outside opposition headquarters: spokesman, monitor

A still image taken from a video posted to a social media website said to be shot on May 3, 2017, shows what is said to be the site of a car bomb in what is said to be Azaz, Syria. Social Media Website via Reuters TV

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A car bomb killed at least five people and wounded several others in a rebel-held town in northern Syria on Wednesday in an attack Syria’s political opposition said targeted its officials and local headquarters.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also put the death toll at five and said it was expected to rise due to the number of people seriously wounded by the blast in Azaz. The town near the Turkish border has long been a major base for rebels, including groups backed by Ankara.

“A booby-trapped car exploded in front of a headquarters for the interim government,” a spokesman for the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Ahmad Ramadan, told Reuters by phone.

One of those killed was a guard, Ramadan said. He blamed the attack on Islamic State.

“It was a direct targeting of the (interim) government because the center includes departments of various ministries and local councils,” he said.

There was no claim of responsibility for the blast.

The opposition’s interim government, allied with the SNC, carries out technical and administrative functions of government from within opposition-held Syria. SNC members also sit on the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), the main Syrian opposition body which represents both political and armed groups.

Rebel groups clashed in Azaz in November, one of many incidents that has shown the division among some of the armed opposition, which ranges from Western-backed moderate factions to hardline Islamists, including al Qaeda-linked fighters.

In separate insurgent in-fighting around Damascus since last week, factions are clashing east of the capital in violence that has killed scores of fighters and a number of civilians.

Syria’s six-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million.

(Reporting by John Davison and Ellen Francis; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State attack kills at least 32 in northeast Syria: monitor

BEIRUT (Reuters) – An Islamic State attack in an area held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria killed at least 32 people on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The attack on Rajm al-Salibi, the location of a checkpoint and refugee camp near the border with Iraq, led to fierce clashes, injuring dozens, the Britain-based war monitor said.

The SDF has been battling Islamic State since dawn in nearby areas of Hasaka province, which Kurdish forces largely control, it said.

An adviser to the SDF, Nasser Haj Mansour, confirmed that several civilians had died, including people fleeing Islamic State in Syria’s Deir al-Zor and in Iraq.

The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, has seized large swathes of northern Syria from Islamic State in a campaign to drive the jihadist group out of Raqqa city, its base of operations in Syria.

This week, the SDF said it captured most of the strategic town of Tabqa, 40 km (25 miles) west of Raqqa along the Euphrates.

The SDF said fighting continued on Tuesday to capture the last few districts of Tabqa as well as an adjacent dam, Syria’s largest, and the last major obstacle as the militias prepare to launch an assault on Raqqa.

The Islamic State attack in Hasaka was targeted at the Asayish, a Kurdish internal security force that operates in northeast Syria, the Observatory said.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall and Ellen Francis; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

U.S. issues travel alert for Europe, citing threat of terrorist attacks

FILE PHOTO - Passengers make their way in a security checkpoint at the International JFK airport in New York October 11, 2014. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Europe on Monday, saying U.S. citizens should be aware of a continued threat of terrorist attacks throughout the continent.

In the alert, the State Department cited recent incidents in France, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom and said Islamic State and al Qaeda “have the ability to plan and execute terrorist attacks in Europe.”

The State Department’s previous travel alert for Europe, issued ahead of the winter holiday season, expired in February. A State Department official said Monday’s alert was not prompted by a specific threat, but rather recognition of the continuing risk of attacks especially ahead of the summer holidays. The alert expires on Sept. 1.

Malls, government facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, airports and other locations are all possible targets for attacks, the State Department’s alert said.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Diane Craft)

Taliban attackers kill at least 140 soldiers at Afghan base: officials

FILE PHOTO: Afghan national Army (ANA) troops keep watch near the site of an attack on an army headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Anil Usyan

By Abdul Matin and Hamid Shalizi

MAZAR-I-SHARIF/KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) – At least 140 Afghan soldiers were killed by Taliban attackers apparently disguised in military uniforms, officials said on Saturday, in what would be the deadliest attack ever on an Afghan military base.

One official in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the attack occurred, said on Saturday at least 140 soldiers were killed and many others wounded. Other officials said the toll was likely to be even higher.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government has yet to release exact casualty figures.

The defense ministry said more than 100 soldiers were killed or wounded.

The attack starkly highlighted the struggle by the Afghan government and its international backers to defeat a Taliban insurgency that has gripped Afghanistan for more than a decade.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani visited the base on Saturday, and in a statement online, condemned the attack as “cowardly” and the work of “infidels”.

As many as 10 Taliban fighters, dressed in Afghan army uniforms and driving military vehicles, made their way into the base and opened fire on mostly unarmed soldiers eating and leaving a mosque after Friday prayers, according to officials.

They used rocket-propelled grenades and rifles, and several detonated suicide vests packed with explosive, officials said.

Witnesses described a scene of confusion as soldiers were uncertain who the attackers were.

“It was a chaotic scene and I didn’t know what to do,” said one army officer wounded in the attack. “There was gunfire and explosions everywhere.”

The base is the headquarters for the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps, responsible for much of northern Afghanistan, including Kunduz, a province which has seen heavy fighting.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Saturday the attack on the base was retribution for recent killing of several senior Taliban leaders in northern Afghanistan.

On Saturday, the U.S. military command in Kabul said that an American air strike killed a Taliban commander, Quari Tayib, on April 17. Eight other Taliban were also killed the strike, according to a statement by the command.

Mujahid said the attack on the base killed as many as 500 soldiers, including senior commanders.

Four of the attackers were Taliban sympathizers who had infiltrated the army and served for some time, Mujahid said.

That has not been confirmed by the Afghan army.

The NATO-led military coalition deploys advisers to the base where the attack occurred to train and assist Afghan forces but coalition officials said no foreign troops were hurt or killed.

“The attack on the 209th Corps today shows the barbaric nature of the Taliban,” the commander of coalition forces, U.S. General John Nicholson, said in a statement on Friday.

German forces have long led the international mission in northern Afghanistan.

In Berlin, military officials said advising missions on the base will be on hold for one or two days while the Afghan army investigates, but that work would resume.

“The situation shows that we cannot stop supporting, training and advising our Afghan partners,” a German Operations Command spokesman said.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Louise Ireland)