Tag Archives: terror

Israel has homegrown Islamic State threat in hand

An Israeli soldier is silhouetted as he takes part in an open-fire scenario training in which soldiers respond with laser-firing rifles to a simulated Palestinian attack

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s crackdown on Arab citizens trying to join Islamic State in Syria or Iraq or to set up cells at home have prevented the threat reaching the scale seen in the West, an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a magazine interview.

About 18 percent of Israel’s population are Muslim Arabs, many of whom identify with the Palestinian struggle, although they seldom take up arms against the majority Jewish country.

However, a rash of defections to Islamic State-held areas of Syria and Iraq and trials of Israeli citizens for identifying with the militant group prompted President Reuven Rivlin to warn in January that “considerable radicalization” was taking root among Israel’s Arab minority.

Eitan Ben-David, head of the Counter-Terrorism Bureau in Netanyahu’s office, told the bi-monthly journal ‘Israel Defense’that “more than a few dozen, but not more than 100” Israeli Arabs had joined Islamic State’s ranks – and some might return.

“These foreign fighters can certainly pose a grave danger internally, so the Shin Bet (security service) and all the state system is doing very good work in foiling this threat, which could be a kind of spreading cancer,” Ben-David said.

“To our satisfaction, the situation is reasonable. It is not like any European country, nor even America, or places like China or Russia which have had a great number of homegrown ISIS fighters,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Israel formally outlawed Islamic State in 2014 and negotiated the repatriation for trial of several Arab citizens who had joined or tried to join the insurgents via Turkey or Jordan.

But government policy hardened last year after one Israeli Arab used a paraglider to fly into an Islamic State-controlled part of southern Syria and after another who had served as a volunteer in Israel’s army defected to the insurgents.

Further raising alarm, two video clips surfaced in October in which Islamic State gunmen vowed in Arabic-accented Hebrew to strike Israel. The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, echoed the threat in an audiotape released in December.

But Ben-David sounded circumspect about that prospect, citing potentially more pressing dangers from Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas or Palestinian militants.

In an incident on Thursday, a Palestinian woman tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank and was shot dead, the military said.

In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 196 Palestinians, 134 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

“When it comes to Islamic State, we worry about terrorist attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets, including abroad, but we are not a main target right now,” he said.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Gareth Jones)

Turkey has prevented 85 security incidents since January

Police officers secure the area after an explosion in front of the city's police headquarters in Gaziantep

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey has prevented 85 “major incidents” since January, many involving live bombs, the government’s spokesman said on Monday, a day after the sixth suicide bombing in a Turkish city this year.

“We are making great efforts in the struggle against terror,” Numan Kurtulmus told reporters at a briefing in the capital, Ankara.

“We have prevented 85 major incidents since January. Forty-nine of those included live bombs.”

Turkey has been hit by a series of suicide bombings this year, including two in its largest city Istanbul blamed on Islamic State, and two in the capital Ankara which were claimed by a Kurdish militant group. It has also faced attacks from far leftist groups, mostly on police and security forces.

On Sunday, two police officers were killed and 22 people wounded by a suicide car bomb in the southeastern city of Gaziantep.

Last week, a suicide bomber blew herself up near the main mosque in the northwestern city of Bursa, injuring eight people. The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, has since claimed responsibility for the attack.

(Reporting by Ercan Gurses; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Italy arrests Islamic State suspects, uncovers attack plot

Italy's Interior Minister Alfano arrives for a confidence vote at the

MILAN (Reuters) – Italian police have arrested four people suspected of conspiring to join Islamic State in the Middle East in a probe that revealed a plan to carry out a militant attack in Italy, a Milan prosecutor said on Thursday.

Italy has been spared deadly attacks by Islamist militant groups such those seen in recent months in France and Belgium, but authorities are nevertheless carrying out regular arrests of suspects, some of whom they accuse of plotting assaults.

As part of the same investigation, police also issued arrest warrants for two fugitives — a Moroccan man and his Italian wife — who left Italy and headed toward Iraq and Syria last year.

Investigators believe one of the suspects asked another to plan an attack in Italy and mentioned Rome, Milan prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli told a news conference.

“The new aspect here is that we are not talking about a generic indication (of an attack) but a specific person being appointed to act on Italian soil,” Romanelli said.

“Rome attracts attention because it is a destination for Christian pilgrims,” he said.

Last month, police in southern Italy arrested a 22-year-old Somali imam and asylum seeker on suspicion he was planning an attack in Rome.

The four arrested on Thursday were another couple living near Lake Como, a 23-year-old Moroccan man, and a female relative of the fugitive couple, police said.

The couple and the Moroccan man were planning to travel together to join Islamic State on its territory in Syria and Iraq, and the woman had helped put the two couples in contact with each other, police said.

The Moroccan man’s brother was expelled from Italy last year on suspicion of having fought for the group, according to police.

(Reporting By Emilio Parodi, writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Bus Bomb in Jerusalem wounds 16

Flames rise at the scene where an explosion tore through a bus in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A bomb blew up a bus and set fire to another in Jerusalem on Monday, wounding 16 people in an attack that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu linked to a six-month-old wave of Palestinian street violence.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility from any Palestinian factions for the blast. Israeli officials declined to assign direct blame.

They said two of the casualties had not yet been identified and may have been bombers.

Suicide bombings on Israeli buses were a hallmark of the Palestinian revolt of 2000-2005 but have been rare since. With Palestinians carrying out less organized stabbing, car-ramming and gun attacks since October, Israel has been braced for an escalation.

“We will settle accounts with these terrorists,” Netanyahu said in a speech, referring to whoever executed the bus attack.

“We are in a protracted struggle against terror – knife terror, shooting terror, bomb terror and also tunnel terror,” he added, speaking hours after Israel announced its discovery of an underground passage dug by Hamas militants from Gaza.

Police initially said they were looking at the possibility that a technical malfunction caused the fire that consumed two buses on Derech Hebron road, in an area of southwest Jerusalem close to the boundary with the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But based on the wounds and other findings, authorities concluded that a small and possibly rudimentary explosive device was set off at the back of one of the buses.

Those details recalled the bombing of a Tel Aviv bus by an Israeli Arab during the 2012 Gaza war which caused injuries but no deaths.

In the last half year, Palestinian attacks have killed 28 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens. Israeli forces have killed at least 191 Palestinians, 130 of whom Israel says were assailants. Many others were shot dead in clashes and protests.

Drivers behind the bloodshed include Palestinian bitterness over stalled statehood negotiations and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, stepped up Jewish access to a disputed Jerusalem shrine, and Islamist-led calls for Israel’s destruction.

Bombings have not been carried out during this period – though Israeli prosecutors said a Palestinian woman who tried to blow up a gas balloon in her car after being pulled over by police in October was a would-be suicide bomber.

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Paris and Brussels Attack Suspect Arrested

CCTV image made available by Belgian Police shows a suspect in the attack which took place at the Brussels international airport of Zaventem

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Mohamed Abrini, wanted over November’s Islamic State attacks in Paris, has been arrested in Brussels, Belgium’s public broadcasters said on Friday, adding that he was probably involved in last month’s Brussels bombings.

Public prosecutors confirmed in a brief statement only that police had made several arrests related to the Brussels attacks.

Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian, was “more than likely” the “man in the hat” seen on security camera footage at Brussels airport on March 22 with two suicide bombers, VRT and RTBF said on their websites, citing unidentified sources.

If confirmed, the arrests could mark a success for Belgian security services which have faced fierce criticism at home and abroad since Brussels-based militants organized the attacks that killed 130 in Paris on Nov. 13.

They took place a day after police issued new images and detail on the “man in the hat” and follow the arrest in Brussels three weeks ago of the prime surviving suspect in those attacks.

Four days after the March 18 arrest of Salah Abdeslam, with whom Abrini was seen driving towards Paris two days before the Paris attacks, brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui and a third local man Najim Laachraoui killed 32 people at Brussels airport and on a metro line running under EU institutions.

VRT and RTBF said Abrini was probably the man disguised in heavy glasses and a floppy hat who was pictured with Brahim Bakraoui and Laachraoui moments before the other two blew themselves up at the airport.

A second suspect held on Friday was believed to be a man seen with Khalid Bakraoui at a metro station shortly before the latter blew himself up on a train on the same line downtown.

VRT named the second man as Osama Kraiem. Broadcasters said he had also been caught on CCTV buying holdalls at a downtown mall which were later used in the Brussels bombings.

Abrini was arrested in the borough of Anderlecht, VRT said, next to the western district of Molenbeek which has been at the heart of Belgium’s troubles with Islamist militants.

He had been on Europe’s most wanted list since being seen on a motorway service station CCTV video driving with Abdeslam towards Paris from Belgium in a car used two days later in the attacks in which Abdeslam’s elder brother was a suicide bomber.

The “man in the hat” left the airport shortly after the twin suicide bombings and was tracked on CCTV for several miles into the city center. On Thursday, investigators released new video footage of him and urged people to look for his discarded coat.

Wearing glasses and a hat, he had been very difficult to identify from the footage showing him pushing a laden luggage trolley alongside the two who blew themselves up with similar bags. A third bomb was later found abandoned at the airport.

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Angus MacSwan)

Lebanese Ex-Minister Sentenced for Plotting Attacks

Former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha gestures at his house after being released in Beirut, Lebanon, January 14, 2016.

By Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Lebanese military court on Friday increased to nearly 10 years the jail term for a former minister convicted last year of smuggling explosives and planning attacks, in a case that has underscored the country’s sharp political divisions.

Former information minister Michel Samaha, who has close ties to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was detained in August 2012 and confessed to involvement in a plot for which Damascus’ security chief Ali Mamluk was also indicted.

Syrian officials have denied Damascus was involved, but the allegations exposed rifts in Lebanon, which often break along sectarian lines, over Syria’s long-standing involvement in the country.

Samaha’s initial four-year sentence and later release on bail prompted bitter protests from opponents of Assad, who saw the decisions as unduly lenient and evidence that Damascus and its ally Hezbollah held sway over the justice system.

The case also gained wider regional significance when Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir suggested it was part of the reason Riyadh was withdrawing billions of dollars in aid from Lebanon’s army and security forces.

He said the military court’s granting of bail to Samaha raised questions over the army’s independence from the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, Lebanon’s main powerbroker and a principle ally of Riyadh’s top regional rival Iran.

On Friday the court set Samaha’s new sentence at 13 years, but in Lebanon a prison year is equivalent to nine months.

“The issuance of the verdict on the terrorist Michel Samaha corrects the former lenient verdict, which we had rejected and declared we would not tolerate,” said former prime minister Saad al-Hariri, a leading critic of Damascus.

Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a member of Hariri’s Future Movement, said the new sentence confirmed “the correctness of our trust in the president and members of the court”.

Ashraf Rifi, another Sunni Muslim politician, had resigned his post as justice minister over his granting of bail in January after describing the trial last year as a travesty of justice.

Syria is Lebanon’s largest neighbor and dominated the country from the end of its civil war in 1990 until 2005, when U.S.-led pressure helped force Syrian troops to leave.

Its ally Hezbollah remains Lebanon’s main power broker and has fought alongside government forces in Syria’s civil war.

Hezbollah and its leading members made no immediate comment on Friday’s sentence.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam and Angus McDowall; editing by John Stonestreet)

Abbas Offers To Meet Netanyahu

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gestures as he delivers a speech in the West Bank city of Bethlehem

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday he was working to stop Palestinian knife attacks and other street violence against Israel and had offered to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rekindle peace efforts.

The remarks appeared to be an effort by the Western-backed Abbas to turn the tables on Israel, which has cast him as responsible for the diplomatic deadlock and the surge of bloodshed.

Speaking to Israel’s Channel 2 TV, Abbas gave rare details on his domestic security drives, a touchy matter as many Palestinians deem such moves collaboration with their enemy.

“Our security forces go into the schools to search pupils’ bags and see if they have knives. You don’t know this,” he said.

“In one school, we found 70 boys and girls who were carrying knives. We took the knives and spoke to them and said: ‘This is a mistake. We do not want you to kill and be killed. We want you to live, and for the other side to live as well.'”

Abbas’s administration and Israel coordinate security in the occupied West Bank despite the stalling two years ago of U.S.-sponsored negotiations on Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu says he is open to renewing talks and that Abbas has been avoiding these while inciting violence with his rhetoric against Israel.

But Abbas told Channel 2 that the onus was on Netanyahu.

“I will meet with him, at any time. And I suggested, by the way, for him to meet,” the Palestinian leader said in English.

Asked what became of that overture, Abbas said: “No, no – it’s a secret. He can tell you about it.”

Netanyahu’s office had no immediate response.

Since October, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and gun ambushes have killed 28 Israelis and two U.S. citizens. At least 190 Palestinians, 129 of whom Israel says were assailants, have been killed by its forces. Many others were shot in clashes.

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank under 1993 interim peace deals. Israeli forces now freely operate in PA areas, something Abbas described as sapping his credibility at home. He said he was willing to take action against Palestinians that Israeli intelligence deems a threat.

“If he (Netanyahu) gives me responsibility and tells me that he believes in (the) two-state solution and we sit around the table to talk about (the) two-state solution, this will give my people hope, and nobody dares to go and stab or shoot or do anything here or there,” Abbas said.

Netanyahu has said he would favor the creation of a Palestinian state as long as Israel’s terms are met such as its security needs. Whether Abbas could vouchsafe the Gaza Strip is in doubt, as it is under the de facto control of armed Hamas Islamists who oppose permanent coexistence with Israel.

For his part, Netanyahu has been hazy about whether he would remove Jewish settlements in the West Bank to make way for the Palestinians. He heads a pro-settlement coalition the includes one ultra-nationalist party opposed to Palestinian statehood.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Boko Haram Targets Civilians

A member of a civilian vigilante group holds a hunting rifle while a woman pumps water

KERAWA, Cameroon (Reuters) – Adama Simila wears a knife tied to his belt by a piece of rope, his only protection against Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist insurgents who have repeatedly targeted his home town in remote northern Cameroon.

While the threat once came from heavily armed, battle-hardened jihadists crossing from neighboring Nigeria, today Simila knows he is more likely to die at the hands of a teenage girl strapped with explosives.

“We’re here to look out for suicide bombers,” said the 31-year-old, a member of a local civilian defense force in the town of Kerawa.

After watching its influence spread during a six-year campaign that has killed around 15,000 people according to the U.S. military, Nigeria has now united with its neighbors to stamp out Boko Haram.

A regional offensive last year drove the insurgents from most of their traditional strongholds, denying them their dream of an Islamic emirate in northeastern Nigeria. An 8,700-strong regional force of troops from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria is seeking to finish the job.

Now, increasingly on the back foot, Boko Haram is retaliating with a deadly guerrilla campaign against civilians, and ordinary people like Simila have become the last line of defense.

“I’m not scared. They are people, we are also people. We must die to live,” said Simila, who was at the Kerawa market in September when two girls detonated themselves, killing 19 people and injuring 143 others. A nearly identical bombing at the same market followed in January.

Outside Nigeria, Cameroon has been hardest hit by Boko Haram, which now operates out of bases in the Mandara Mountains, Sambisa Forest and Lake Chad — areas straddling the borders between Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger.

Since August 2014, the sect has carried out 336 attacks in Cameroon, according to the Cameroonian army, which has lost 57 of its own men while defending the north.

Of 34 recorded suicide bombings killing 174 people, 80 percent were carried out by girls and young women aged 14 to 24 years.

Girls abused as sex slaves by the group are psychologically damaged and therefore more vulnerable, the army says. Boko Haram also uses girls because they are thought less likely to arouse suspicion, although that may be changing now.

“The goal now is to stop Boko Haram incursions into villages, stop them from planting IEDs (home-made bombs), and stop suicide bombings,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Tetcha, a senior officer in the army’s operation against Boko Haram.

Cameroon has thrown vast resources into protecting the north.

In total nearly 10,000 of its troops are deployed against Boko Haram. The army’s Rapid Intervention Brigade (BIR), comprised of its most professional, best equipped soldiers, patrols a high-risk 400-km (250-mile) stretch of the border with Nigeria.

The U.S. military backs them with equipment, training and intelligence gathered from American drones flown out of a base in the town of Garoua. A Reuters reporter saw a small American military camp inside another BIR base in nearby Maroua.

Still, the terrain is mountainous and Boko Haram has rigged many roads with explosives designed to kill soldiers. Army officers are convinced that some fighters from Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year, have been trained at IS camps in Libya.

Armed incursions by Boko Haram fighters have dropped. But the army does not have enough soldiers to deploy in every town in northern Cameroon, and suicide bombers strike regularly, often several times in a single week.

“The border is under control, but it’s still very porous,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Emile Nlaté Ebalé, head of operations and logistics for the BIR’s mission in the north.

“EVERYBODY SUFFERS IN THIS PLACE”

Faced with such an asymmetrical threat, Cameroon’s army has turned to so-called vigilance committees for help.

As the blazing midday sun beat down on Kerawa, Bouba Ahmada walked along a dry, scrub-lined creek bed, an ancient flintlock musket slung around his neck.

“Here is Cameroon, over there is Nigeria,” he said, gesturing towards the abandoned homes just across the dusty expanse. “It’s empty. Only Boko Haram stays there.”

Made up of men and boys armed with machetes, home-made rifles or bows and arrows, these self-defense forces have the blessing of the local government.

They accompany the army on patrols and intelligence gathering missions, question travelers, and denounce to the military anyone deemed suspect.

Last week they intercepted two female suicide bombers and handed them over to the army before they were able to detonate.

“We are not 100 percent dependent on this information, but this information is crucial,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Tetcha, who is not only defending Cameroon but also a growing number of Nigerians.

Close to the border sits the U.N.-run Minawao camp, home to nearly 57,000 refugees who have fled Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“Everybody suffers in this place,” said James Zapania, a 24-year-old camp resident from Gwoza, Nigeria. “We’re not worried about Boko Haram coming here, we’re worried about food.”

Refugees like Zapania often receive a chilly welcome from suspicious local villagers, many of whom view them as collaborators or even underground Boko Haram fighters.

According to one Cameroonian officer, the army has removed a number of individuals from Minawao for “activities that were not in line with the behavior of a normal refugee”.

Suspicion is everywhere. And while Boko Haram infiltrators make up only a tiny portion of fleeing refugees, many, including the Cameroonian military, fear that desperation provides fertile ground for recruitment.

“We need to act quickly. There are young people with no work who could be vulnerable. When people are hungry, they are easily approached,” said Colonel Didier Badjeck, a Cameroonian military spokesman.

(Editing by Joe Bavier and Giles Elgood)