Tag Archives: Islamic Terrorism

Rising migrant flow to Spain could become ‘big emergency’: U.N.

Migrants, who are part of a group intercepted aboard a dinghy off the coast in the Mediterranean sea, stand after arriving on a rescue boat at a port in Malaga, Spain August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Jon Nazca

GENEVA (Reuters) – The rising flow of migrants to Spain from North Africa could evolve into a “big emergency” if the pace continues, the U.N.’s migration agency said on Friday.

After large rescues in recent days, including 300 off Spain’s southern coast who had attempted to cross the Mediterranean from Morocco, more than 9,000 migrants have arrived by sea in Spain this year, surpassing the 2016 totals, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

In addition, 121 migrant deaths have been recorded on the route, against 128 for all of last year.

“We understand from our experts in the field that Spain now is going through something like what Greece saw in the beginning of 2015 or Italy even earlier,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a Geneva news briefing.

The vessels heading to Spain are much smaller and carry fewer migrants than those crossing to Italy from Libya, or previously from Turkey to Greece, but they are now arriving daily, he said.

“Obviously if this grows at the rate it’s growing it could be a big emergency,” Millman said, adding that other aid actors would have to help.

Spain this year has reported a spike in the number of migrants coming by sea or trying to cross the borders in its two North African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, and numbers are expected to double when compared to 2016.

“At the moment our estimation is 9 percent of those on the move into Spain are children,” said Sarah Crowe, spokeswoman of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

So far this year 119,069 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea, with almost 83 percent landing in Italy and the rest divided between Greece, Cyprus and Spain, IOM said.

This compared with 266,423 arrivals across the region at the same time last year, it said.

“Deaths on the Mediterranean this year are 800 below what they were at this time last year,” Millman said. IOM figures show that they currently stand at 2,410 dead or missing.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Alister Doyle)

Spanish police shoot five suspects dead after van rampage kills 13 in Barcelona

Spanish police shoot five suspects dead after van rampage kills 13 in Barcelona

By Andrés González, Angus Berwick and Carlos Ruano

BARCELONA (Reuters) – Spanish police shot dead five would-be attackers after confronting them early on Friday in a town south of Barcelona where hours earlier a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds, killing 13 people and wounding scores of others.

Islamic State said the perpetrators had been responding to its call for action by carrying out Thursday’s rampage along Barcelona’s most famous avenue, which was thronged with tourists enjoying an afternoon stroll at the peak of the summer season.

Bodies, many motionless, were left strewn across the avenue and authorities said the toll of dead, which included several children, could rise, with more than 100 injured.

Hours later in the early hours of Friday, as security forces hunted for the van’s driver, police said they killed five suspects in Cambrils, 120 km (75 miles) south along the coast from Barcelona, to thwart a separate attack.

The five men attempted to drive into tourists on the Cambrils seafront, police said. Their car overturned and some of them began stabbing people. Four were shot dead at the scene and the fifth was killed a few hundred meters away, police said.

Police said they had arrested a Moroccan and a man from Spain’s north African enclave of Melilla, though neither was the driver of the van. He was seen escaping on foot and was still at large. A third man was arrested in the town of Ripoll on Friday.

Police said later they had made a fourth arrest in connection with the attacks but gave no details.

A Spanish woman was killed in the Cambrils incident while several other civilians and a police officer were injured. Police destroyed explosive belts the men had been wearing, though they turned out to be fake.

Of the 130 people injured in both attacks, 17 were in a critical condition and 30 were serious, an emergency services spokesman said.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, the day before the van plowed into the tree-lined walkway of Barcelona’s Las Ramblas avenue, one person was killed in an explosion in a house in a separate town southwest of Barcelona, police said.

A judicial source said investigators believed a cell of at least eight people, possibly 12, may have been involved in the Barcelona and Cambrils operations and that it had been planning to use gas canisters.

Later on Friday, residents and tourists returned to Barcelona’s famous Las Ramblas promenade where hours earlier a white van had zigzagged at high speed through pedestrians and cyclists, leaving bodies and injured writhing in pain in its wake.

The injured and dead came from 34 countries, ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan and the Philippines, Catalan emergency services said. Spanish media said several children were killed.

As Spain began three days of mourning, people laid flowers and lit candles in memory of the victims along the promenade. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Spain’s King Felipe visited Barcelona’s main square nearby to observe a minute’s silence.

Defiant crowds later chanted “I am not afraid” in Catalan.

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIM

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency said the attackers had carried out the operation “in response to calls for targeting coalition states” – a reference to a U.S.-led coalition against the Sunni militant group. Spain has several hundred soldiers in Iraq training local forces in the fight against Islamic State.

There was no immediate indication though that Islamic State had directed or organized the attack, although some of those responsible for similar attacks in Europe have been inspired by the jihadist group.

Islamist militants have staged several attacks across Europe in the past 13 months, killing over 100 people in Nice, Berlin, London and Stockholm.

In March 2004, Islamist militants placed bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people.

BODIES ON THE GROUND

Police said the two men detained on Thursday had been arrested in two towns, Ripoll and Alcanar, both in the region of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital.

The explosion was also in the town of Alcanar. One person died and another was injured in that incident, police said.

A man was also found dead in a car which had driven into a police checkpoint in Barcelona, though the police could not immediately confirm it was connected with the van attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking after media reports that some Germans were among those killed, said Islamist terrorism “can never defeat us” and vowed to press ahead with campaigning for a general election in Germany in September.

Last December, Berlin suffered a similar attack when a truck plowed into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12.

Italy said two of its nationals were killed and three injured while Belgium said one Belgian had died. German television channel ZDF reported three Germans among the dead.

France said 26 of its citizens were hurt, and 11 of them were in a serious condition. Australia said at least four of its nationals were injured, with broadcaster ABC saying a seven-year-old boy was unaccounted for.

A British Foreign Office spokeswoman said the ministry was assisting “a small number” of Britons.

Foreign leaders voiced condemnation and sympathy, including French President Emmanuel Macron, whose nation has suffered some of Europe’s deadliest militant attacks.

In a message to the cardinal of Barcelona, Pope Francis said the attack was “an act of blind violence that is a grave offence to the Creator”.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the attack showed the European Union’s system of migrant relocation was wrong. “It is dangerous. Europe should wake up,” he said. “We are dealing here with a clash of civilizations.”

Authorities in Vic, a small town outside Barcelona, said a van had been found there in connection with the attack. Spanish media had said that a second van was hired as a getaway vehicle.

(Additional reporting by Sarah White, Andres Gonzalez, Silvio Castellanos, Alissa de Carbonnel, Ali Abdelaty and Ahmed Aboulenein, Kylie MacLellan; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Mark Bendeich, Nick Tattersall and Richard Balmforth)

Suicide bombers kill 27, wound 83 in northeast Nigeria

By Ahmed Kingimi

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – A woman suicide bomber blew herself up and killed 27 others at a market in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday, two local officials said, in an attack bearing the hallmark of Boko Haram militants.

Two more suicide bombers detonated their devices at the gates to a nearby refugee camp, wounding many people, an emergency services official said.

In all, 83 people were wounded in the three explosions near the city of Maiduguri, epicenter of the long-running conflict between government forces and Boko Haram.

Nigeria’s military last year wrested back large swathes of territory from the Islamist insurgents. But they have struck back with renewed zeal since June, killing at least 143 people before Tuesday’s bombings and weakening the army’s control.

The group has waged an eight-year war to create an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, and provoked international outrage by kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls known as the Chibok Girls in April 2014.

Its better-known faction, led by Abubakar Shekau, has mainly based itself in the sprawling Sambisa forest, and been characterized by its use of women and children as suicide bombers targeting mosques and markets.

A rival faction – based in the Lake Chad region, led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi and boasting ties to Islamic State – has in the meantime quietly become a deadly force capable of carrying out highly-organised attacks.

Last month, an oil prospecting team was captured by al-Barnawi’s group. At least 37 people, including members of the team, died when rescuers from the military and vigilantes attempted to free them.

The Boko Haram insurgency has killed 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million to flee their homes in the last eight years.

(Reporting by Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Suspect in hit-and-run on French soldiers unknown to spy agencies: source

Suspect in hit-and-run on French soldiers unknown to spy agencies: source

PARIS (Reuters) – The Algerian national suspected of ploughing a hire car into a group of soldiers in a wealthy Paris suburb is believed to be unknown to French intelligence services and had no criminal record, a police source said on Thursday.

Investigators late on Wednesday raided several addresses associated with the 36-year-old suspect, who was cornered by armed police from elite units on a motorway some 260 kilometers (162 miles) north of the capital.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the incident was a “deliberate act” and prosecutors opened a counter-terrorism investigation. The police source said the suspect is called Hamou Benlatreche, confirming local media reports.

Benlatreche was not thought to be on a secret service list of people linked to radical Islam, the police source said.

“When a suspect is on the list, we know immediately,” the source said. “But in this case we’ve not been given any indication that he is.”

Benlatreche’s uncle described his nephew as a faithful Muslim who prayed regularly, and expressed shock at hearing that his relative was linked to the attack.

“I couldn’t believe it. It totally stunned us,” Mohammed Benlatreche told BFM TV.

The attack targeted a group of soldiers as they began a morning patrol in the upscale area of Levallois-Perret, home to France’s domestic intelligence agency and only a few kilometers from landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower.

Six of the soldiers were injured, three of them seriously.

They were part of Operation Sentinel, a 7,000-strong force launched in the wake of Islamist attacks in Paris in early 2015.

Wednesday’s attack was the sixth on troops belonging to the force and has raised questions about the strain the operation on home soil has placed on an army facing budget cuts.

Opponents say it is overstretching the army, reducing time between operational rotations, depriving regiments of time for training for foreign deployments and hurting morale. Some say the troops are sitting ducks for would-be militants.

“All it has done is hand Daesh clear targets,” Vincent Desportes, former director of France’s Ecole de Guerre, was quoted as saying in daily newspaper Le Parisien. Daesh is the commonly used Arabic name for Islamic State.

Supporters of Operation Sentinel, which costs hundreds of millions of euros a year, say the force has served as a deterrent and given French citizens and tourists greater peace of mind.

Jacques Bessy, president of the Association for the Defence of Soldiers’ Rights, acknowledged the strains placed on the military but said the mission was essential.

“It is true that the operation is tiring and stressful,” said Bessy. “We need to examine the resources in order to refocus the patrols on priority areas such as stations, tourist sites, certain places of worship.”

 

(Reporting by Caroline Pailliez, Cyril Camy and Miranda Alexander-Webber; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Catherine Evans)

 

Islamic State still a threat as Mosul residents return to city in ruins

A member of Iraqi federal police patrols in the destroyed Old City of Mosul, Iraq August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Abu Ghazi stood smoking a cigarette outside what used to be his home in Mosul’s Old City, where only the sound of the footsteps of a few soldiers on patrol and twisted pieces of metal and fabric flapping in the wind disturb the eery silence.

“They should just bulldoze the whole thing and start over,” he said, gazing at the rows of collapsed buildings with their contents strewn across the upturned streets.

“There’s no saving it now, not like this.”

Hundreds of yards away on Wednesday Federal Police shot an Islamic State fighter as he emerged firing his gun from an underground tunnel on Makkawi Street.

Similar stories have been reported by aid workers and residents of West Mosul in the past few days.

“West Mosul is still a military zone as the search operations are ongoing for suspects, mines and explosive devices,” a military spokesman said.

“The area is still not safe for the population to return.”

However, in nearby Dawrat al Hammameel, with machines whirring in his workshop, Raad Abdelaziz said he has encouraged neighbors to return despite the still very real danger weeks after the government declared victory over the jihadists.

Just this week, his nephew, Ali, saw a militant emerge from under a house and try to injure some civilians before he was caught and handed over to the Federal Police.

But Abdelaziz, whose factory was up and running just two weeks after he returned to Mosul with his family, persists: We want people in the neighborhood to come back to their jobs.”

He is already filling orders for water and gas tanks from residents intent on rebuilding. “Life is already coming back gradually,” he said.

FLOCKING OVER THE PONTOON

Like Abu Ghazi and Raad Abdelaziz, dozens of those displaced by the fighting have returned to West Mosul, which saw some of the fiercest fighting in nine-month battle to rout the militants from their stronghold in Iraq’s second-largest city.

At the northern pontoon, one of two remaining access points between East and West Mosul, hundreds walked towards the western half of the city, carrying suitcases, household goods and livestock. Others drove across the makeshift bridge in overflowing coaches.

Ziad al Chaichi came back to reopen his tea shop in West Mosul a week ago, having fled his nearby home in March.

“Everything’s still a mess – we have nothing. No water, no electricity – we need the essentials,” he said in his shop where dainty porcelain tea pots hung from the walls. He was thankful that some people were buying his tea, including Abdelfattah, a neighbor who sat with a group of men outside.

“We want life to return here,” said Abdelfattah, 60, who came back to a partially collapsed home with his family about three weeks ago. “Not for us – the older generation – but for the children… Until then, we’re just sitting here patiently, drinking tea.”

PUNGENT REMINDER

Even in death, the militants haunt Mosul’s residents.

A handful of their bodies are lying around the Old City, a pungent reminder of the last ten months.

“We wish they would just take them away,” said Najm Abdelrazaq. But unlike with civilian bodies, the police and the military refuse to allow it, he said.

“Why should we dignify them and remove the bodies?” one soldier said, when asked why the bodies were being left to rot in the 47 degree Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) heat. “Let them rot in the streets of Mosul after what they did here.”

Returnees are concerned about the smell and the risk of disease, but they’d rather have the bodies of their neighbors recovered first.

Around the corner from Chaichi’s shop, scrawled across several collapsed houses in blue ink was: “The bodies of families lie here under the rubble.”

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Referrals to UK counter-terrorism scheme double after recent attacks: police

Police officers patrol in front of London Stadium during World Athletics Championships in London, Britain, August 6, 2017. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Mark Hosenball

LONDON (Reuters) – Referrals by members of the public to the British government’s counter-terrorism scheme have doubled since militants launched deadly attacks earlier this year in London and Manchester, a senior police official said on Wednesday.

Simon Cole, the National Police Chief Council’s lead spokesman on deradicalization efforts, said police had received around 200 referrals to the strategy known as “Prevent” from members of the public since March when Britain suffered the first of four deadly attacks.

Officials said that this figure was around twice the numbers of referrals that “Prevent” representatives around Britain had received in the months prior to the attacks.

“Even though these referrals from the public are increasing, we still need more people to have the confidence to tell our safeguarding experts if they are worried about someone’s behavior,” Cole told reporters.

Prevent has long been the most controversial strand of the government’s attempts to stop Britons from becoming involved in violent extremism following its introduction in the wake of the July 2005 suicide bombings by four British Islamists on London’s transport network.

Many Muslims believe it has been used as a tool to spy on their communities rather than simply sway potential militants from becoming radicalised.

Cole’s comments are the latest attempt by senior officers to try to reassure the public about Prevent and come days after Dean Haydon, the officer who heads up London’s Counter Terrorism Command, said it had achieved “fantastic results” and that criticism was based on ignorance.

“All of us involved in Prevent need to work to improve that public confidence and understanding, challenging damaging myths and be more transparent in our approach,” Cole said. “We would rather people show concern before something happens.”

Cole said the number of referrals made to “Prevent” by members of the public was still relatively low, with 500 made in 2016 and 2017 compared to an annual total of about 6300. The other referrals were made by government or police bodies or other public organizations.

The program had helped the authorities stop about 150 people from traveling to Syria in the past year, Cole said, adding about 55 to 60 percent of referrals were related to possible involvement by British individuals with Islamic State militants.

However, another 15 percent were related to right-wing extremism. Officials said that the number of referrals about suspected right-wing extremists had doubled since the murder last June of British lawmaker Jo Cox, who was killed by a loner obsessed with Nazis and white supremacist ideology.

(editing by Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge)

Maryland man indicted for attempted murder of FBI agent, Islamic State support

(Reuters) – A federal grand jury has indicted a Maryland man on charges of attempting to murder an FBI agent and trying to provide support to Islamic State militants, U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Nelash Das, 25, of Landover Hills, was arrested by federal agents in September 2016 as he was preparing to attack a U.S. military service member. He was accompanied by a person who was a paid FBI informant, court records show.

Das, a Bangladeshi citizen who is a legal U.S. resident, was indicted for attempting to provide support to the Islamic State from October 2015 to September 2016, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The statement and the indictment gave no details about the charge of attempting to murder an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Das also was indicted on a firearms offense.

Officials were not immediately available to comment.

The three-count indictment supersedes a charge filed shortly after his arrest.

Das told the informant that he was committed to attacking a military service member, adding, “That’s my goal in life,” according to an October 2016 affidavit.

Das remains in custody and if convicted faces up to life in prison. His attorney, federal public defender Julie Stelzig, did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Qatar Airways evaluates routes opened by boycotting countries

FILE PHOTO: Qatar Airways aircraft at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar June 12, 2017. REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon/File Photo

DOHA (Reuters) – Qatar Airways is evaluating whether it will use air routes which media reports said were opened this week by countries embroiled in a political dispute with Qatar, the airline’s chief executive said on Wednesday.

Qatari-owned aircraft are blocked from using the airspace of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as part of economic sanctions enforced by the four countries in June.

Qatar Airways is studying “the flexibility and benefit” of one “very short route” while another route off the Egyptian coast was “useless” to the airline, Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker said at a Doha press conference.

Al-Baker did not say where the short route was located or when the airline would decide if it would use the routes.

The United Nation’s aviation agency said on Aug. 8 Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to open some of its airspace to Qatari aircraft, according to media reports.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE severed ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of supporting Islamist militants.

Qatar has denied the allegations.

The airspace closures have forced Qatar Airways to fly longer, more expensive routes, prompting Doha to call for the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization to intervene.

 

(Reporting by Tom Finn, writing by Alexander Cornwell. Editing by Jane Merriman)

 

Car rams into soldiers in Paris suburb in suspected terrorist attack

Armed soldiers secure the scene where French soliders were hit and injured by a vehicle in the western Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, France, August 9, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

By Benoit Tessier and Richard Lough

PARIS (Reuters) – A car rammed into a group of soldiers in a Parisian suburb on Wednesday, injuring six before speeding off in what officials identified as a suspected terrorist attack.

The vehicle, a BMW, was parked in an alley before it accelerated into the soldiers as they left their barracks to go on patrol, said Patrick Balkany, mayor of Levallois-Perret.

“The vehicle did not stop. It hurtled at them … it accelerated rapidly,” he told broadcaster BFM TV.

Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said the driver was on the run and being sought, and an investigation was under way to determine “the motives and circumstances” for what she called a “cowardly act”.

A justice ministry official said counter-terrorism investigators had been assigned to the case.

The incident follows a string of Islamist-inspired attacks on soldiers and police, who have been deployed in large numbers nationwide after calls by militant group Islamic State for attacks on France and other countries bombing its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

The soldiers hit on Wednesday were rushed to hospital and police said two of the six were seriously injured.

SCRAPING METAL

Balkany said that what he called a “disgusting” act of aggression was “without any doubt” premeditated.

Jean-Claude Veillant, resident of an apartment building directly above the scene, witnessed part of the attack.

“I heard a loud noise, the sound of scraping metal. Shortly after, I saw one of the badly wounded lying in front of the Vigipirate (army patrol) vehicle and another one behind it receiving treatment,” he told reporters.

France remains on maximum alert following a string of attacks over the past two years in which Islamist militants or Islamist-inspired attackers have killed more than 230 people.

Most were civilians killed in Paris in early and late 2015 as well as in the southern seaside city of Nice in mid-2016, Since then a string of attacks have primarily targeted police and soldiers.

This year, assailants attacked soldiers at the Louvre museum site in Paris in February and at Orly airport in March. An assailant shot a policeman dead on the Champs Elysees avenue in the capital in April. Another man died after ramming his car into a police van in June and soldiers disarmed a knife-wielding man at the Eiffel Tower earlier this month.

The car in Wednesday’s attack, which police said was dark-colored and probably a BMW, was parked near the edge of the Place de Verdun square in the center of Levallois-Perret, a relatively affluent suburb on the western edge of Paris.

The area, quieter than normal in peak summer holiday season, was cordoned off after the incident, which happened at around 8:00 a.m., police said.

Levallois-Perret is about 5 km (3 miles) from city center landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Elysee Presidential Palace.

(Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Caroline Paillez, Brian Love and Johnny Coton; Writing by Brian Love; editing by John Stonestreet)

Boko Haram militants kill at least 30 fishermen in northeast Nigeria: governor

Nigeria to release $1 billion from excess oil account to fight Boko Haram

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Boko Haram militants killed at least 30 fishermen in raids on communities around Lake Chad in northeastern Nigeria, the governor of Borno state, residents and military sources said on Tuesday.

The raids are part of renewed attacks by the militant Islamist group which, prior to the latest attacks, have led to at least 113 people being killed by insurgents since June 1.

Last month members of an oil prospecting team were kidnapped in the restive Lake Chad Basin region, prompting a rescue bid that left at least 37 dead including members of the team.

It was carried out by a Boko Haram faction allied to Islamic State which has been active around Lake Chad.

Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno state which is at the epicenter of the insurgency, told journalists that Boko Haram militants had attacked and killed over 30 people in different villages in the latest attacks.

Residents and military sources said the militants ambushed fishermen in a series of raids between Saturday and Monday at villages near the northeast Nigerian border town of Baga.

Baga is at Nigeria’s border with Chad, Niger and Cameroon and in 2015 was the site of fierce fighting between the insurgents and Nigerian troops.

The Boko Haram insurgency, aimed at creating an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, has killed 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million to flee their homes in the last eight years.

(Reporting by Lanre Ola, Ahmed Kingimi, Kolowale Adewale and Ardo Abdullahi in Bauchi; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Richard Balmforth)