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French soldier shoots, wounds machete-wielding attacker at Paris Louvre

Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, sight of recent terrorist attack attempt

By Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) – A French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete and carrying two bags on his back on Friday as he tried to enter the Paris Louvre museum in what the government said appeared to have been a terrorist attack.

The man shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) and rushed at police and soldiers before being shot near the museum’s shopping mall, police said, adding a second person had also been detained after acting suspiciously.

The attacker was alive but seriously wounded, the head of Paris police Michel Cadot told reporters at the scene, adding the bags he had been carrying contained no explosives.

“The soldier fired five bullets,” Cadot said, describing how the man hurried threateningly toward the soldiers at around 10 a.m. (0900 GMT).

“It was an attack by a person … who represented a direct threat and whose actions suggested a terrorist context.”

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said during a visit to Bayeux in Normandy: “It appears to be an attempted attack of a terrorist nature.”

The soldier who fired the bullets was from one of the patrolling groups that have become a common sight around the capital since a state of emergency was declared across France in November 2015. An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement.

Another soldier was slightly wounded in the incident.

The identity and nationality of the attacker remains unknown for now, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters. Interior Minister Bruno le Roux abandoned a trip to the Dordogne region to return to Paris.

More than 230 people have died in France in the past two years at the hands of attackers allied to the militant Islamist group Islamic State.

The country is less than three months away from a presidential election in which security and fears of terrorism are among the key issues.

Paris was also planning to submit its official bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games on Friday with a launch show at the Eiffel Tower around 1730 GMT.

The city had in recent months been gradually recovering from a dip in foreign tourism caused by the attacks.

The most recent deadly attack took place in the southern city of Nice in July last year when a man drove a truck into a crowd on the seafront killing 86.

In September, in an attempted attack, a group of women parked a car containing gas canisters near Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

Police cordoned off and evacuated the area around the museum for a time on Friday but began to allow traffic to pass less than two hours after the incident. Louvre officials closed the museum and kept visitors inside for a time before beginning to let them leave.

(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Chine Labbe, Bate Felix; Editing by Andrew Callus, John Irish and Janet Lawrence)

Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of country: watchdog

Afghan National Army soldier stands guard

By Josh Smith

KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of the country, a U.S. watchdog agency reported on Wednesday, after security forces retreated from many strongholds last year.

Afghan soldiers and police, with the aid of thousands of foreign military advisers, are struggling to hold off a resurgent insurgency led by the Taliban, as well as other groups like Islamic State.

As of November, the government could only claim to control or influence 57 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, according to U.S. military estimates released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in a quarterly report to the U.S. Congress.

That represents a 15 percent decrease in territory held compared with the same time in 2015, the agency said in a report.

“SIGAR’s analysis of the most recent data provided by U.S. forces in Afghanistan suggests that the security situation in Afghanistan has not improved this quarter,” it said.

“The numbers of the Afghan security forces are decreasing, while both casualties and the number of districts under insurgent control or influence are increasing.”

More than 10 percent of districts are under insurgent control or influence, while 33 percent are contested, according to the report.

Some of the most contested provinces include Uruzgan, with five of six districts under insurgent control or influence, and Helmand, with eight of its 14 districts under insurgent control or influence.

U.S. military officials say much of the loss of territory reflects a change in strategy, with Afghan forces abandoning many checkpoints and bases in order to consolidate and focus on the most threatened areas.

Insurgents tried at least eight times to capture provincial capitals, although each assault was eventually beaten off.

According to U.S. military estimates, the number of Afghans living under insurgent control or influence decreased slightly in recent months to about 2.5 million people.

But nearly a third of the country, or 9.2 million people, live in areas that are contested, according to SIGAR, leading to some of the highest civilian casualty rates the United Nations has ever recorded in Afghanistan.

Afghan security forces also sustained heavy casualties, with at least 6,785 soldiers and police killed in the first 10 months of last year, with 11,777 wounded, SIGAR reported.

Casualty figures are rarely released by the Afghan government, while difficulties in confirming and tracking troop numbers make any figures subject to wide variation.

SIGAR reported some progress in combating corruption, which has plagued both Afghan military and political institutions.

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Pennsylvania man pleads guilty to using Twitter to help Islamic State

(Reuters) – A 20-year-old Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty on Monday to posting the names of approximately 100 U.S. military members online and exhorting his Twitter followers to kill them in an effort to support Islamic State.

Jalil Aziz faces up to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to two terrorism-related charges in federal court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

U.S. authorities have brought Islamic State-related charges against more than 100 individuals since 2013. An Arizona man was found guilty at trial on Monday of helping a New York City college student travel to Syria, where he died fighting for Islamic State.

Aziz used his Twitter account to release names, addresses, photographs and military branches for the U.S. service members, according to an indictment.

He told his followers to “kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their street thinking that they are safe,” prosecutors said.

All told, Aziz used at least 71 Twitter accounts to disseminate messages in support of the radical group Islamic State, authorities said.

He was initially arrested in December 2015 and charged with trying to help others travel to the Middle East to join Islamic State fighters.

Prosecutors said investigators found a “go bag” at his home containing ammunition, a knife and a black mask.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Duterte pleads with Philippine rebels to rebuff Islamic State advances

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday pleaded with the country’s Muslim separatist groups to deny sanctuary to militants with links to Islamic State, warning a war would ensue that would put civilians in danger.

His appeal comes a day after his defense minister said foreign intelligence reports showed a leader of the Abu Sayyaf rebel group was getting instructions from Islamic State to expand in the Philippines, in the strongest sign yet of links to the Middle Eastern militants.

Duterte said he could no longer contain the extremist “contamination” and urged two Muslim separatist rebels groups – the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front – to rebuff Islamic State’s advances.

“I am earnestly asking, I am pleading to the MNLF and the MILF, do not provide sanctuary to the terrorists in your areas,” he told troops at a military camp in Mindanao, his home region.

“Because if that happens, then we will be forced to go after them within your territory, and that could mean trouble for all of us. I don’t want that to happen.

“The government is going after them, they have done wrong, they killed a lot of innocent people.”

The south of the predominately Christian Philippines has for decades been a hotbed of Muslim insurgency but Duterte is worried some smaller groups and splinter factions that have pledged allegiance to Islamic State could host IS fighters being driven out of Iraq and Syria.

They include the Maute group in Lanao del Sur province and the Abu Sayyaf in the Sulu Archipelago near Malaysia.

Abu Sayyaf, which means “bearer of the sword”, is notorious for piracy and kidnapping and for beheading foreign hostages for whom ransoms are not paid.

It has used the Islamic State flag in hostage videos posted online.

(Reporting by Martin Petty; Editing by Robert Birsel)

NY man linked to Islamic State gets 20 years prison for New Year’s Eve plot

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – An upstate New York man was sentenced on Thursday to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State, in connection with his alleged role in preparing a New Year’s Eve attack in 2015 at a local club or bar.

Emanuel Lutchman, 26, of Rochester, was sentenced by Chief Judge Frank Geraci of the federal court in that city, following his August 11 guilty plea, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

The prison term was the maximum possible, and Lutchman was also sentenced to 50 years of supervised release. He has been in custody since his Dec. 30, 2015 arrest.

A federal public defender representing Lutchman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to his plea agreement, Lutchman admitted to having bought a machete, knives, ski masks and other items for his attack, in which he was prepared to kidnap or kill people, and planned to later release a video explaining his actions.

The defendant also admitted to having conspired with Abu Issa Al-Amriki, a now deceased member of Islamic State in Syria, hoping that a successful attack would help him gain membership into the group, the Justice Department said.

Lutchman had also expressed support for Islamic State on social media, and gathered issues of Inspire, an online magazine published by al Qaeda, designed to help people conduct “‘lone wolf’ terrorist attacks” in the United States, the department added.

The defendant was arrested soon after recording a video in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State, vowed to “spill the blood” of non-believers, and asked Allah to “make this a victory.”

Lutchman’s lawyer had sought a 10-year prison term.

In a court filing, he said Lutchman had since age 14 had “extensive” mental health issues including bipolar disorder and depression, and was easily influenced by radical Islam, but has now “renounced” Islamic State and “seen its empty promise.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

Florida airport shooting suspect indicted on 22 criminal counts

law enforcement walk at ft. lauderdale airport

TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) – A federal grand jury has indicted on 22 criminal counts an Iraq war veteran suspected of killing five people in a mass shooting at a Florida airport this month, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

Esteban Santiago, 26, is accused of opening fire in the baggage claim area of the Fort Lauderdale airport on Jan. 6. The charges against him include multiple counts of violence at an airport resulting in death and injury, as well as firearms crimes.

If convicted, he could be punished by life imprisonment or death. The U.S. Attorney General has not decided whether to seek a death sentence, the prosecutors office said.

The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in Broward County, Florida, where the attack occurred, prosecutors in the U.S. Southern District of Florida said in a news release.

Authorities said Santiago aimed at victims’ heads and bodies until he ran out of ammunition and was taken into custody. Five people were killed in the attack and six others wounded.

The indictment accuses Santiago of “substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of a person.”

The attack was the latest in a series of deadly U.S. mass shootings, some inspired by Islamist militants, others carried out by loners or the mentally disturbed.

Santiago had a history of erratic behavior. Authorities have said they were investigating whether mental illness played a role in the shooting.

Court records show he is being represented by a public defender. A representative answering calls for the office said it had no immediate comment.

An arraignment hearing in Santiago’s case is scheduled in federal court in Fort Lauderdale on Monday.

A private first class in the National Guard who served in Iraq from 2010 to 2011, Santiago traveled from Alaska to Florida on a one-way airline ticket with a handgun and ammunition in his checked luggage, according to authorities.

Upon arrival, he claimed his gun case and loaded the weapon in a men’s bathroom, investigators said in a criminal complaint. He opened fire on the first people he saw after leaving the restroom, it said.

Santiago told investigators he was inspired by Islamic State and had previously chatted online with Islamist extremists, according to FBI testimony presented in court.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and James Dalgleish)

Eight held in Austrian police raids linked to Islamic State

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austrian police took eight people into custody on Thursday in raids linked to potential connections with the militant group Islamic State, prosecutors in the city of Graz said.

Around 800 police officers took part in the raids in Vienna and Graz “due to suspected participation in a terrorist organization (‘IS’),” they said in a statement, adding that the coordinated action had been planned for some time.

The statement gave no more details, but a spokesman said the people taken into custody included three Austrian nationals with a migrant background, two Bosnians and a Syrian. The nationalities of the other suspects were not immediately known.

“There was no acute danger” and no indications of a concrete attack, the spokesman said, adding that the detentions were not connected to the arrest of an Austrian teenager last week on suspicion of planning an Islamist attack in Vienna.

That suspect, a 17-year-old with Albanian roots, was arrested on Friday after tip-offs from unspecified foreign countries. Austria alerted Germany to a related suspect, a 21-year-old who was arrested in the western German city of Neuss on Saturday. A boy thought to be 12 has also been held in Austria.

German authorities have been on high alert since a Tunisian failed asylum seeker rammed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19, killing 12 people.

Police in Vienna have also been on heightened alert since Friday’s arrest and have increased patrols at transport hubs and busy public places.

(Reporting by Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich in Vienna and Michael Shields in Zurich; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Israel advises citizens in Egypt’s Sinai to leave, cites attack risk

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel on Tuesday advised its citizens in Egypt’s insurgency-hit Sinai peninsula to leave the region, warning of the threat of an imminent attack.

Israeli holidaymakers are often warned of the risks they face in Sinai, which borders Israel, but the “Level 1” alert issued by the anti-terrorism directorate is its most severe warning.

It described the threat as “very high and concrete”.

“The directorate warns of the possibility of attacks against tourist sites in the Sinai area in the immediate term,” a statement said.

An Islamist insurgency in the rugged, thinly populated Sinai has gained pace since the military toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement, in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Militants have launched a number of deadly cross-border attacks on Israel in the past few years and have occasionally fired rockets across the border into the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

The anti-terrorism directorate said that while there was a “constant high threat” in Sinai, Jan. 25, the anniversary of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, was a day that had witnessed attacks in previous years.

Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1978 and the eastern coast of the peninsula is a popular international tourist destination.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; editing by Richard Lough)

Florida airport shooting suspect inspired by Islamic State: media

Travelers and airport workers evacuated at Ft. Lauderdale airport

(Reuters) – An Iraq war veteran accused of killing five people at a Florida airport told investigators he was inspired by Islamic State and previously chatted online with Islamist extremists, an FBI agent testified on Tuesday, U.S. media reported.

Esteban Santiago, 26, was ordered held in jail until a Jan. 30 arraignment, court records show. At that time he would enter a formal plea to charges that he opened fire in the baggage claim area of the Fort Lauderdale airport on Jan. 6.

“He has admitted to all of the facts with respect to the terrible and tragic events of Jan. 6,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rick Del Toro said at the federal court hearing in Fort Lauderdale, NBC 6 South Florida television reported. “These were vulnerable victims who he shot down methodically.”

Reuters was not immediately able to reach U.S. prosecutors or the Federal Bureau of Investigation to confirm the media reports.

Santiago, a private first class in the National Guard who served in Iraq from 2010 to 2011, traveled from Alaska to Florida with a handgun and ammunition in his checked luggage, officials said.

Upon retrieving his gun case from the luggage carousel, he went to a bathroom to load the weapon and then opened fire on others waiting for their bags, investigators said.

FBI special agent Michael Ferlazzo testified Santiago told interrogators he carried out the attack on behalf of Islamic State and that he had been in contact with others on jihadist chat rooms who were planning attacks.

“It was a group of like-minded individuals who were all planning attacks,” Ferlazzo said, according to NBC 6.

The FBI has said Santiago previously displayed erratic behavior, entering the FBI office in Anchorage in November and saying his mind was being controlled by a U.S. intelligence agency.

The FBI turned him over to local police, who took him to a medical facility for a mental evaluation, officials said.

Police took a handgun from him but returned it last month after a medical evaluation found he was not mentally ill, authorities said.

Santiago used the same weapon in the airport attack, agents testified, the Sun Sentinel reported.

His defense team did not challenge the prosecution’s argument that Santiago posed a flight risk and said he was prepared to be detained through his trial, CNN said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Lisa Shumaker)

In northern Aleppo, children return to school used as Islamic State prison

schoolchildren sit on mats as they return to school in Aleppo after Islamic State driven out

By Khalil Ashawi

AL-RAI, Syria (Reuters) – Sifting through ripped up textbooks and writing on broken whiteboards, Syrian children returned this week to a dilapidated small-town school that was used by Islamic State militants as a prison for more than two years.

With no chairs or desks, around 250 children huddled in classrooms on mats to stay off the cold concrete at the Aisha Mother of the Believers school in al-Rai, in the northern Aleppo hinterland near the Turkish border.

The students, aged 5-15, were given notebooks and pens on their first day back on Monday by seven volunteers who teach reading, writing and maths and helped get the school habitable again over the past six weeks.

“(I feel) joy, because I was able to bring back to school this number of students in a short period,” said volunteer Khalil al-Fayad. “(But also) heartbreak because of the bad condition (of the school).”

The school previously taught 500 students before being seized 2 1/2 years ago by Islamic State insurgents, who slapped logos on school bags bearing the slogan “Cubs of the Caliphate”, residents said.

The principal and teachers fled the area when Islamic State took over and parents stopped sending their children to the school, which closed after two months and was used to house prisoners of the ultra-hardline jihadists.

Volunteers set about trying to return the school to its previous standards last month in al-Rai after Syrian Free Army rebels backed by the Turkish military ousted Islamic State from the area.

With shattered windows, bullet strewn walls, debris and broken equipment still present, there is plenty left to do for the team of volunteers, who say they are seeking funding from local and Turkish authorities.

“(I) fear not being able to continue what we are doing if the situation remains the same and the lack of support continues,” Al-Fayad said.

(Writing by Patrick Johnston; editing by Mark Heinrich)

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