Tag Archives: Jihadist

Facing jihadist attack, Syrian rebels join bigger faction

Syrian Islamic Rebels firing missiles at Bashar al Assad

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham said on Thursday six other rebel factions had joined its ranks in northwestern Syria in order to fend off a major assault by a powerful jihadist group.

The hardline Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, once allied with al Qaeda and formerly known as the Nusra Front, attacked Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups west of Aleppo this week, accusing them of conspiring against it at peace talks in Kazakhstan this week.

Ahrar al-Sham, which presents itself as a mainstream Sunni Islamist group, sided with the FSA groups and said Fateh al-Sham had rejected mediation attempts. The Ahrar statement said that any attack on its members of was tantamount to a “declaration of war”, and it would not hesitate to confront it.

Rebel factions Alwiyat Suqour al-Sham, Fastaqim, Jaish al-Islam’s Idlib branch, Jaish al-Mujahideen and al-Jabha al-Shamiya’s west Aleppo branch said in a statement they had joined Ahrar al-Sham.

The Ahrar al-Sham statement also mentioned a sixth group, the Sham Revolutionary Brigades, and “other brigades” had joined alongside these five.

Ahrar al-Sham is considered a terrorist group by Moscow and did not attend the Russian-backed Astana peace talks. But it said it would support FSA factions that took part if they secured a favorable outcome for the opposition.

The attack by Fateh al-Sham had threatened to wipe out the FSA groups which have also received backing from countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad such as Gulf Arab states, Turkey and the United States.

Internationally viewed as a terrorist group, Fateh al-Sham has been excluded from all diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian conflict, including the recent truce brokered by Russia and Turkey. Since the new year, the group has been targeted by a spate of U.S. air strikes.

While Jabhat Fateh al-Sham has often fought in close proximity to FSA rebels against Assad, it also has a record of crushing foreign-backed FSA groups during Syria’s complex, almost six-year conflict.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Syrian rebels seize ‘doomsday’ village where Islamic State promised final battle

A view shows an office that was used by Islamic State militants in Turkman Bareh village, after rebel fighters advanced in the area, in northern Aleppo

By Angus McDowall and Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels said they captured the village of Dabiq from Islamic State on Sunday, forcing the jihadist group from a stronghold where it had promised to fight a final, apocalyptic battle with the West.

Its defeat at Dabiq, long a mainstay of Islamic State’s propaganda, underscores the group’s declining fortunes this year as it suffered battlefield defeats in Syria and Iraq and lost a string of senior leaders in targeted air strikes.

The group, whose lightning advance through swathes of the two countries and declaration that it had established a new caliphate stunned world leaders in 2014, is now girding for an offensive against Iraq’s Mosul, its most prized possession.

The rebels, backed by Turkish tanks and warplanes, took Dabiq and neighboring Soran after clashes on Sunday morning, said Ahmed Osman, head of the Sultan Murad group, one of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions involved in the fighting.

“The Daesh myth of their great battle in Dabiq is finished,” he told Reuters, using a pejorative name for Islamic State.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said that Dabiq’s liberation was a “strategic and symbolic victory” against Islamic State.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter also welcomed the retaking of Dabiq as both a military and symbolic blow to Islamic State and thanked Turkey for the role it played. “Its liberation gives the campaign to deliver ISIL a lasting defeat new momentum in Syria,” Carter said, using an alternative name for the group. ‎

The Free Syrian Army is an umbrella group for rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, dragging in regional and global powers and creating space for jihadists.

An Islamic prophecy names Dabiq as the site of a battle between Muslims and infidels that will presage doomsday, a message Islamic State used extensively in its propaganda, going so far as to name its main publication after the village.

It also chose Dabiq as the location for its killing in 2014 of Peter Kassig, an American aid worker held hostage by the group, by Mohammed al-Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John.

However, it has appeared to back away from Dabiq’s symbolism since advances by the FSA groups backed by Turkey had put it at risk of capture, saying in a more recent statement that this battle was not the one described in the prophecy.

The village, at the foot of a small hill in the fertile plains of Syria’s northwest about 14 km (9 miles) from the Turkish border and 33 km north of Aleppo, has little strategic significance in its own right.

But Dabiq and its surroundings, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State had brought 1,200 fighters in recent weeks, occupied a salient into territory captured by the Turkey-backed rebels.

CLASHES

Ankara launched the Euphrates Shield operation, bringing rebels backed by its own armor and air force into action against Islamic State, in August, aiming to clear the group from its border and stop Kurdish groups gaining ground in that area.

“Euphrates Shield will continue until we are convinced that the border is completely secure, terrorist attacks against Turkish citizens out of the question and the people of Syria feel safe,” Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said.

The Turkish-backed forces would now continue their advance toward the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab, southeast of Dabiq, he said.

A Turkish military source said that while Dabiq was largely under control, some rebels had been killed in blasts by landmines and other bombs.

The rebels and Turkish military were working to secure Dabiq’s surroundings to prevent any remaining Islamic State fighters trapped in the area from escaping.

Since early 2016 Islamic State’s territorial possessions in Syria have been steadily eroded by the Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella group of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the United States, which in August took the city of Manbij.

Turkey’s campaign has since cut the jihadist group off from the Turkish border, long its most reliable entry point for supplies and foreign fighters.

Meanwhile air strikes have killed a succession of Islamic State leaders in Syria, including its “war minister” Omar al-Shishani and Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, one of its leading strategists and an architect of its shift toward plotting attacks in Europe.

In Iraq the army backed by Shi’ite Muslim militia groups has this year recaptured Falluja and is now poised for an offensive on Mosul, where Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in 2014 declared himself heir to Islam’s caliphs.

However, the militants still hold most of Syria’s Euphrates basin, from al-Bab, 26 km southeast of Dabiq, through the group’s capital of Raqqa and to the Iraqi border.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun in Ankara and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Sandra Maler)

Saudi Arabia’s new jihadists; poorly trained but hard to stop

A damaged car is seen after a blast near the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia's second city of Jeddah July 4, 2016. Picture taken July 4, 2016. Saudi Press Agency/

By Angus McDowall

RIYADH (Reuters) – Technical hitches limited the death tolls in three suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia but the apparent coordination of the blasts suggests jihadis have the tools to sustain their bombing campaign.

Three young Saudis detonated explosive vests near a Shi’ite mosque in Qatif last Monday, killing only themselves, while an attack by another young Saudi suicide bomber at the Prophet’s mosque in Medina killed four policemen.

Before dawn the same day a 34-year-old Pakistani driver had blown himself up in a car park outside the U.S. consulate in Jeddah but only injured two security guards.

“Technically these people are poor. Psychologically they are very poor. Training-wise they are poor,” said Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security expert at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Centre with ties to the Saudi Interior Ministry.

“Out of five suicide bombers, four killed themselves for nothing.”

Nevertheless, that five individuals were able to build or acquire explosive vests and to plot three attacks on the same day points to a command chain and supply network that presents a formidable threat, security analysts say.

The attacks were not claimed by any group although the government believes Islamic State is responsible after detaining 19 suspects linked to the five attackers.

The coordination but poor training appear to be a sign of Islamic State’s operational model in Saudi Arabia, recruiting would-be jihadists online and managing plots remotely with minimal involvement in training.

An Islamic State recruit inside the kingdom will then seek friends or relatives to join him in an attack, while his handlers in Syria or Iraq suggest a target and help to provide explosives and instructions on how to make a bomb.

That low profile makes it very difficult for the security forces to identify networks or uncover attacks before they are carried out, and Islamic State’s minimal investment in operations means it has little to lose if a plot goes awry.

SLEEPER CELLS

Unlike during an al Qaeda campaign a decade ago there is no network of interconnected cells under a central leadership in Saudi Arabia that can be infiltrated or rolled up by the security services.

“They ask young people to stay in Saudi Arabia and create sleeper cells and this is a very dangerous thing because you do not know who is in a sleeper cell or who is a lone wolf,” a senior Saudi security officer told Reuters last year.

Traces of nitroglycerine were found at the locations of each of last week’s explosions and preliminary investigations suggest the explosives were of a type used by the military.

Police at present believe they came from the same source, said Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Turki.

“We’re talking about highly organized attacks under a central command (outside Saudi Arabia) and with a chain of supply,” said Alani.

However, he said the lack of an in-country leadership able to carefully select and groom recruits, provide training, centralize bomb making and prepare attackers psychologically meant that many of its operations were ineffective.

The attackers in Jeddah and Medina were both approached by police in car parks near their likely targets because their nervous behavior attracted suspicion. The Jeddah bomber detonated his device too far from the police to kill them.

After the attack in Qatif, police found explosive packs intact, Alani said, indicating that only the detonators had exploded, killing the bombers but not causing wider damage. Turki said he was unable to confirm that some devices did not properly explode.

CRACKDOWN

Saudi Arabia’s success in clamping down on al Qaeda since its 2003-06 attacks has forced Islamic State towards its model of remote control for lone wolves or sleeper cells.

Western diplomats say the kingdom has developed one of the most formidable counter-terrorism operations in the Middle East under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Interior Minister.

The security police, known as the Mubahith, closely monitor Saudis with suspected connections to militants and have detained over 15,000 suspects since the al Qaeda campaign began.

The rate of arrests slowed near the end of last decade but accelerated again after 2011, when Arab Spring uprisings and civil wars across the Middle East impelled thousands of young Saudis to head overseas to join the fight with many returning home after, officials said.

“The Saudis have come up with a successful strategy with dealing with this sort of problem and they have mounted a highly effective public education campaign in the mosques,” said former U.S. ambassador Chas Freeman.

“And second, they have very effective internal security mechanisms that have enabled them to spot people in the process of turning to terrorism.”

Security tactics have been accompanied by softer measures too. So-called “rehab” centers for militants employed Wahhabi clerics to preach that obedience to the king trumped individual decisions to go and fight in defense of Muslims overseas.

Meanwhile, Saudi media were given access to young men who had returned from fighting overseas whose stories of the brutal reality of life among jihadist groups were broadcast in an effort to dissuade others from militancy.

ONLINE RECRUITS

But sympathy towards fellow Sunni Muslims fighting the war in Syria has created a new generation of young Saudi jihadists.

They support the idea of an Islamic State caliphate and view Saudi Arabia’s rulers and the army and clergy which back them as infidels who betray true Islam.

The government crackdown has forced Islamic State has found new ways to reach potential recruits from a distance, for example through online computer games that are hard for security services to monitor.

Mohammed, a 15-year-old in Riyadh, was contacted by jihadists while playing games on his desktop computer and messaging other online players, his father told Reuters earlier this year, asking to keep his anonymity.

He was chatting with someone who started to send him messages about the injustice faced by Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria. “Come play with us for real,” the person said, and sent Mohammed some films showing Islamic State attacks.

His parents blocked the contact. Reuters was not able to confirm who had contacted Mohammed.

“Daesh is trying to be very active in social media, but I think we are winning thanks to their stupid operations. How can you defend somebody who kills innocents in mosques?” said the senior security official.

(Story refiles to add dropped word in paragraph 10.)

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington; editing by Anna Willard)

Tunisia Arrests 23-Member Terror Cell

Tunisian officials announced that a 23-member terror cell has been arrested in connection with the attack on the Bardo Museum that left 20 tourists and police dead.

All of the members of the jihadist network were Tunisian.  Officials say they are looking for another Tunisian, two Moroccans and an Algerian who have connections to the terrorist networks.

The Tunisian man was identified as Maher Ben Mouldi Kaidi, also known as the “third attacker”, that provided the weapons for the terror attack.

The investigators say they have confirmation that the group was connected with Al-Qaeda, not ISIS as originally believed by some investigators.  The group was working with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

AQIM had been the segment of the terrorist group that had been in control of much of Mali until French forces drove them out of the major cities and into the mountains.

 

Jihadist Takes Hostages In Sydney Café

A jihadist held a group of Sydney, Australia residents hostage for 16 hours before police stormed the building and freed them.

The raid took place just before 2:30 a.m. local time at the Lindt Chocolate Café.  A terrorist named Man Haron Monis, an Iranian who had sent hate mail to the families of fallen soldiers, has been identified as the jihadist.

The terrorist and at least one other person are dead.  Paramedics took four hostages from the café and sources say that three are in critical condition.

The gunman had forced the hostages to stand in front of the store’s windows with their hands pressed against them.  A few hours into the incident he placed a jihadist flag in the café window.

Australia’s Network Ten reported that Monis was armed with a shotgun and a machete.  He demanded to speak directly to Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Monis emigrated to Australia in 1996 and was known for his extremist views.

UK To Seize Passports Of Jihadists

The UK is going to seize the passports of any citizen who joined jihadists in the Middle East to prevent them from returning home.

Prime Minister David Cameron outlined the government’s new regulations to seize regulations that would include landing bans on airlines that fail to comply with no-fly lists.

UK intelligence officials say that at least 500 radicalized Britons are fighting in Iraq and Syria.

“We will shortly be introducing our own new Counter-Terrorism Bill in the UK,” Cameron said.  “New powers for police at ports to seize passports, to stop suspects traveling and to stop British nationals returning to the UK unless they do so on our terms.  New rules to prevent airlines that don’t comply with our no-fly lists or security screening measures from landing in the UK.”

Leaks to British media say the new rules could include admission back into the country if they agree to face charges related to their jihadist actions or de-radicalization courses.

“The root cause of the challenge we face is the extremist narrative. So we must confront this extremism in all its forms,” Cameron said.  “We must ban extremist preachers from our countries. We must root out extremism from our schools, universities and prisons.”

Parents of Student Slain By Self-Proclaimed Jihadist Speak Out

They don’t believe the gunman acted alone.

The parents of New Jersey college student who was gunned down by a man who claims to be a homegrown jihadist spoke out to Fox News about the death of their son and the conditions under which he died.

Alison and Michael Tevlin’s son Brendan was shot eight times while sitting in his Jeep at a red light in West Orange, New Jersey on June 25th.  The gunman, Ali Muhammed Brown, causally walked up to the vehicle and just started shooting.

Brown claims that he shot and killed Tevlin because of the U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He said that he was a “jihadist” and that has led many to call it a case of domestic terror.

“I don’t think it makes that much of a difference at this time,” Allison Tevlin said on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “I think he murdered Brendan and he murdered several others and he is an American. He did what he did. And like I said, he didn’t act alone, so I don’t know if I — we have all the information or enough information to make that kind of judgment; it’s not really for us to make that judgment.”

Brown reportedly killed three other men in the Seattle area earlier in the summer before the murder of Tevlin.  He’s currently held in the Essex County Jail on $5 million bail.  If extradited to Washington

Documentary Shows Islamists Training Children As Murderers

A documentary released by VICE News shows Islamic terrorists training children to be homicide bombers and killers.

“What do you want to be? A jihadist or to execute a martyrdom operation?” Abdullah Al-Belgian of Belgium asks his young son Abdullah. “A jihadist,” he answers.

“Who do you fight with?” filmmaker Medyan Dairieh asks another child featured in the documentary. “The Islamic State,” the boy answers. “Where are you going after Ramadan?” Dairieh inquires. “To the camp … to have training,” the child replies. “What are you going to do after?” Dairieh asks. “Fight the Russians [and] Americans. The infidels.”

The video has interviews with various terrorist operatives that say children under 15 are sent to what is called “Sharia camp” to be brainwashed with the creeds of the terrorists and extreme Islam.  When they turn 16, they are sent to the military camp.

Children taken to the city of Raqqa, Syria are shown dancing and singing for the caliphate celebration after terrorists obtained control of the city.

Former Army Recruit Plotting “Fort Hood Inspired Jihad”

A man who had been scheduled to report to basic training next week is now on the run after the FBI claims he was planning an Islamic terrorist attack on U.S. troops.

Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, who goes by the alias “Booker,” had been recruited into the U.S. Army in Kansas City, Missouri February 2014.   Military officials discharged him last week after his plot was discovered by law enforcement.

Friends of Hassan who claimed he was bragging about his upcoming attack had reportedly contacted the FBI.

The FBI is working with the 902d Military Intelligence Group in attempting to track down Hassan.

The Fort Hood attack which is being used as inspiration by Hassan happened November 5, 2009 when Army Major Nidal Hasan, a radical Muslim, killed 13 people and injured dozens at Fort Hood, Texas.  He was sentenced to death after his trial last August.

Law enforcement sources say that Hassan might not be the only one plotting a similar attack.

Al-Qaeda Issues Call For Domestic Bombings

The Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda is calling on its members to launch terrorists attacks in their home countries.

The terror group released a statement in the latest copy of their magazine Inspire that calls for a series of car bombings in countries that they feel are working against Allah.

The magazine piece specifically calls on jihadists to launch attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.  The article also specifically calls for attacks in “crusading” countries Great Britain and France.

“Choosing the place and time is a crucial factor to success in any operation,” the magazine reads. “Choose targets in your own country. You know the enemy better, you are within … The important thing is that you target people and not buildings.”

The bombers are used to making attacks during “election seasons” and between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

The article also gave instructions on how to make a simple bomb.