Security experts are raising the alarm over an Al-Qaeda plot to blow up at least five passenger airliners on Christmas in a 9/11 style coordinated attack.
The threat is so serious in the minds of British officials that they had considered a total ban on all carry on luggage as a way to thwart the plot.
“We’ve been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They’ve been waiting for the big one,” an airport security source told the London Express. “We have many scares but this one nearly got hand baggage pulled from all airlines. The threat is still alive and real.”
The source says the plot is aimed at European airports because U.S. security measures have increased significantly compared to their counterparts around the world.
The plot reportedly would include radicalized Britons who have returned to the country from being a part of the battles in Syria and the middle east. Some have received terrorist training in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative,” terrorism expert Dr. Sally Leivesley told the Express. “They see themselves at the forefront of attempts to change the world and are represent a very dangerous tool for the terrorists. These sleepers will have been from ordinary and not very religious families and not only is the threat from them here but also when they return battle hardened from Syria and Iraq.”
The Syrian Electronic Army decided to take American Thanksgiving and use it to remind the world they are still watching.
A number of major websites, including major media organizations, were targeted by the SEA. Their websites were met with an error message that read “you’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).”
Other websites featured nothing but the SEA logo.
Dell, Microsoft, Ferrari and even UNICEF were hit by the group.
“It is PR move to show they have the skills, but what they are doing is not dramatically sophisticated,” Ernest Hilbert, managing director of cybercrime at investigations firm Kroll, and former FBI agent, told CNBC, who had been a victim of the group.
“This is a defacement of a website and they redirected traffic from the real site to a site with their stuff on it instead.”
The SEA are a group of hackers that support the government of Bashir al-Assad and claim that western media outlets are backing the terrorist groups that have been fighting against the Syrian regime.
The Islamic caliphate of ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi now has at least 12 militarized allies including nine outside of Iraq and Syria.
NYMag.com reported that the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium identified 12 groups that have pledged to back ISIS although they acknowledged other groups could be supporting ISIS without making a formal announcement.
The report shows that ISIS is taking a large part of the Al-Qaeda terror network.
Taliban splinter group Jundallah has joined other Tehrik-i-Taliban affiliates in Pakistan in aligning with ISIS. The Taliban leaders had long been aligned with Al-Qaeda, so the breakaway parts of the organization joining ISIS are a sign that the former world terror group is losing significant power in the Islamic terrorism community.
One group has been announced inside the Gaza Strip. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which fired rockets into Israel this summer during the terrorist campaign against Israelis, has pledged their support to ISIS and changed their named to al-Dawla al-Islamiyya or The Islamic State.
Groups have also announced their allegiance in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Philippines, Lebanon, Indonesia and Jordan.
A new report from the United Nations says that ISIS has stored enough weapons to continue their fight for at least two more years.
The report says that the supply estimate is taking U.S. airstrikes into account.
“According to different sources, the amounts of Iraqi small arms and ammunition captured by ISIL are sufficient to allow ISIL to continuing fighting at current levels for six months to two years,” the report states. “ISIL should have few problems maintaining state-of-the-art materials seized from the Iraqi Government, as most were unused.”
The terrorists have seized Iraqi and Syrian weapon caches from cities in the Anbar, Diyala and Salah al-Din provinces.
“Both ISIL and [Al Nursa Front] have seized military assets from conventional armies,” the report says. “The scale of these seizures can be grasped by noting that ISIL, in June of 2014, captured vehicles, weapons, and ammunition sufficient to arm and equip more than three Iraqi conventional army divisions.”
The report says that in addition to the weapons, ISIS makes about a million dollars a day from oil sales and over $45 million in the last year from kidnapping ransoms.
The two biggest terrorist organizations in the world are joining forces in Syria to fight U.S. backed rebels.
The Associated Press reports that leaders from ISIS and Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, agreed in northern Syria during meetings to stop fighting each other to focus on destroying rebels in Syria before teaming up to focus on the Al-Assad government.
The two terrorist groups had been fighting to determine who would be the main group attempting to overthrow the Syrian government.
The rebels, who are backed by airstrikes by U.S. aircraft on ISIS positions, are considered to be relatively weak and disorganized compared to their terrorist opposition. A combined force could be too much for the rebels to defeat.
The news of the joining of forces comes as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted the possibility of U.S. combat troops returning to Iraq.
“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee.
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.”
A former ISIS member has testified that a member of NATO is considered an ally of the terrorist organization by ISIS leadership.
Turkey, which has been dragging its feet in joining the world coalition to stop the terrorist group, is reportedly allowing the terrorists to freely cross their border and move supplies and weapons into Iraq and Syria.
The terrorist, calling himself “Sherko Omer”, is a former communications tech for ISIS. He said that Turkey is working with ISIS because of a common hatred for the Kurds.
“ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to attacking the Kurds in Syria,” Omer said. “The Kurds were the common enemy for both ISIS and Turkey. Also, ISIS had to be a Turkish ally because only through Turkey they were able to deploy ISIS fighters to northern parts of the Kurdish cities and towns in Syria.”
Omer also said he has seen first hand the connection between the Turkish army and the terrorists.
“I have connected ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” Omer said. “I rarely heard them speak in Arabic, and that was only when they talked to their own recruiters, otherwise, they mostly spoke in Turkish because the people they talked to were Turkish officials of some sorts because ISIS guys used to be very serious when they talked to them.”
Islamic terrorist group ISIS has captured key natural gas fields near the city of Homs in Syria.
While ISIS has been losing battled and ground to the northern part of their captured areas, the group has been pushing south in an apparent attempt to overthrow the Syrian government.
“So after the Sha’ar company and the positions surrounding it became part of the land of the Caliphate, the soldiers advanced, conquering new areas, and all praise is due to Allah,” the Islamic State said in a message.
The terrorists also posted with the message pictured of slaughtered and tortured Syrian troops.
Syrian activists say that the terrorists appear to be targeting Tayfur military airbase. If the terrorists were to capture the airbase, it would be seen as a major blow to the Syrian government.
Foreign fighters who have grown disillusioned by the truth of ISIS once they begin fighting for the group are finding it hard to leave as the terrorist outfit threatens to kill anyone who leaves.
British newspaper The Observer quotes a source in Syria as saying dozens of British citizens who became radicalized and joined ISIS want to come home to Britain but are being held against their will.
“There are Britons, who, upon wanting to leave have been threatened with death, either directly or indirectly,” the source said.
Moazzam Begg, who had been a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, told the newspaper that when someone joins ISIS they swear an allegiance to the caliphate, which is in essence saying you are a citizen of that “state”.
“When it becomes solidified as an Islamic State, a caliph, and you swear allegiance, thereafter if you do something disobedient you are now disobeying the caliph and could be subject to disciplinary measures which could include threats or death,” said Begg.
The article in the Observer comes days after 19-year-old Mehdi Hassan, a British man who had tried to return to Britain, was killed in battle fighting for ISIS. Hassan was caught trying to leave and imprisoned for four days by ISIS leaders until he agreed to stay with the terrorists.
ISIS reportedly has captured three fighter jets and is training former Iraqi military pilots to fly them.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the planes were taken when the terrorists captured the al-Jarrah airport east of Aleppo. The pilots have been making training flights around the airport in preparation for attacks on western aircraft that has been targeting terrorist strongholds.
“They have trainers, Iraqi officers who were pilots before for (former Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein,” Rami Abdulrahman of the SOHR told Reuters. “People saw the flights, they went up many times from the airport and they are flying in the skies outside the airport and coming back.”
U.S. Central Command would not confirm the reports of the ISIS pilots.
“We’re not aware of (Islamic State) conducting any flight operations in Syria or elsewhere,” U.S. Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said. “We continue to keep a close eye on (Islamic State) activity in Syria and Iraq and will continue to conduct strikes against their equipment, facilities, fighters and centres of gravity, wherever they may be.”
Social media accounts connected to ISIS have shown captured aircraft.