Tag Archives: Terrorist

Jordanian attackers had suicide vests kill nine

Jordanian policemen leave after ending security operations in the vicinity of Karak Castle, where armed gunmen carried out an attack yesterday, in the city of Karak, Jordan

AMMAN (Reuters) – Four attackers who killed nine people in Jordan on Sunday had suicide vests and other weapons, Interior Minister Salamah Hamad said.

“This was a big terrorist operation but we are still in the stage of follow-up of information that relates to it,” Hamad told a news conference on Monday.

He gave no details on the identity or nationality of the attackers, saying investigations were continuing and disclosing details at this stage could hamper national security.

Jordanian security forces said late on Sunday they had killed four “terrorist outlaws” after flushing them out of a Crusader castle in the southern city of Karak. They had holed up there after killing a Canadian woman, three other civilians and five police officers.

The secrecy around the culprits, and whether they belonged to any militant group, has raised speculation from politicians and diplomats they could have been tribal outlaws with a grievance against the state rather than Islamic State fighters, who control parts of neighboring Syria and Iraq.

The security forces were able to release around 10 tourists. At least 30 people were hospitalized, some with serious injuries.

(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Israel arrests 13 on suspicion of arson over mass wildfires

Firefighters work as a wildfire burns in the village of Beit Meir near Jerusalem

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli police arrested 13 people on Friday on suspicion of arson, authorities said, after massive wildfires tore through central and northern Israel, a conflagration that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded as “terrorism”.

Firefighters kept battling the flames in wooded hills around Jerusalem and in northern areas on Friday, with support from Palestinian firemen and emergency teams from Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Italy, Russia and Turkey.

Netanyahu said he had also accepted offers of help from Egypt and Jordan.

Unseasonably dry weather and easterly winds helped kindle the fires, which erupted on Tuesday and now stretch across half the country.

Arson appeared to be behind some of the blazes, Netanyahu said. “A price will be paid for this arson-terrorism,” he told reporters on Friday. He said the arson was carried out by “elements with great hostility toward Israel.”

A resident stands next to burnt cars from Thursday's fire in the northern city of Haifa, Israel

A resident stands next to burnt cars from Thursday’s fire in the northern city of Haifa, Israel November 25, 2016. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

“We cannot tell yet if this is organized, but we can see a number of cells operating,” Netanyahu said.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a dozen people had been detained either while attempting to set fires or fleeing the area, but he provided no further details. Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan told reporters 13 people were arrested.

Erdan said those arrested were “minorities”, an allusion to either Arab Israeli citizens or Palestinians. “The highest likelihood is that the motive is nationalistic,” Erdan told Army Radio. Police, however, stopped short of declaring any motive.

The fires are the biggest in the country since 2010, when 44 people were killed in a killed in a massive blaze in the north. Investigators concluded that fire was caused by negligence.

ACCUSATIONS

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of a far-right party, said on Thursday the fires could not have been started by Jews and on Friday blamed them on “nationalist terrorists”, a reference in Israel to Palestinians.

“There is no coincidental ‘wave of fires’,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is a nationalist terrorist wave by fire terrorists meant to murder civilians and cause fright.”

A living room burnt in Thursday's fire is pictured in the northern city of Haifa, Israel

A living room burnt in Thursday’s fire is pictured in the northern city of Haifa, Israel, November 25, 2016. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

There has been no official response from Palestinian leaders. But Ayman Odeh, a leading Israeli Arab politician from Haifa, rejected the suggestion Arabs were responsible for arson attacks and accused the Israeli government of taking advantage of the situation to incite against the Arab minority.

Nearly a third of the residents of Haifa, a coastal city of around 250,000 people, including a large Arab population, spent the night in shelters and nearby towns and villages after being ordered to leave on Thursday in the face of walls of flame.

Smoke billowed over the city on Friday morning as firefighters worked to douse the remaining fires. City officials said the situation was under control but that at least 700 homes had been badly damaged or destroyed.

About 80,000 evacuees from Haifa were allowed to return to their homes on Friday as firefighters curbed the flames.

Israel’s chief of police said on Thursday people may have decided to start fires after seeing the trouble they were causing. “We’re in an area where if someone sees on the news there is an opportunity, he can take advantage of the opportunity,” said Roni Alsheich.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said forces had arrested a Palestinian man caught trying to set a fire near the Israeli settlement of Kochav Yaakov in the occupied West Bank. Footage aired on Israeli television showed three people setting a fire in an open area near the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

Police said one man from the Bedouin village of Rahat in southern Israel had been arrested for incitement after he posted a message on his Facebook page calling on others to start fires.

Palestinians seek an independent state in territories including the West Bank that Israel took in a 1967 war. The last round of peace talks collapsed in 2014.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Luke Baker and Mark Heinrich)

Accused New York bomber due in court to face charges

Suspected bomber Ahmad Khan Rahimi appears via video in a New Jersey state courtroom from his hospital bed, where he is recovering from gunshot wounds suffered during his arrest, in Elizabeth, New Jersey

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A man accused of injuring 30 people in September when he set off a homemade bomb on a crowded New York street, as well as planting other explosive devices around the region, is due in federal court on Thursday to face charges.

Ahmad Khan Rahimi, 28, is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court to be arraigned on the charges, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction, which could result in a mandatory life sentence.

Prosecutors have accused the Afghan-born U.S. citizen of setting off an explosion in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Sept. 17, which did not kill anyone but hurt 30 people.

The attack came hours after authorities say another pipe bomb planted by Rahimi went off along the course of a charity road race in New Jersey, though that detonation did not injure anyone.

Federal prosecutors also say Rahimi left another bomb in Chelsea that did not go off and several explosive devices in a bag at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He was captured after a manhunt that ended with a shootout with police officers who discovered him sleeping in the doorway of a bar in Linden, New Jersey. The confrontation left him with severe injuries, delaying the filing of federal charges.

He has also been charged by federal and state prosecutors in New Jersey.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

Accused bomber to be arraigned on New Jersey charges Thursday

A policeman takes a photo of a man they identified as Ahmad Khan Rahami, who is wanted for questioning in connection with an explosion in New York City, as he is placed into an ambulance in Linden, New Jersey, in this still image taken from video

Oct 11 (Reuters) – A man accused of bombings in New York and New Jersey last month that injured dozens is set to be arraigned on New Jersey state charges on Thursday, one of his attorneys said on Tuesday.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was born in Afghanistan, is set to be arraigned at the Union County Courthouse by video feed from his hospital room where he is recovering from gunshot wounds suffered during his arrest, Alexander Shalom said. Union County prosecutors charged Rahami with five counts of attempted murder of a police officer and weapons charges.

Shalom, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, is temporarily representing Rahami on separate federal charges until public defenders can take over the case.

Rahami, 28, has been held in a Newark, New Jersey, hospital with wounds suffered during a shootout with police on Sept. 19 when he was arrested. He faces federal charges in both states stemming from a bombing the previous weekend in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 31 people, and explosives found in two New Jersey locations. No one was killed in the blasts.

He also is accused of planting another pressure-cooker bomb in Chelsea that failed to explode, and multiple devices at a
train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One of those exploded as a bomb squad robot attempted to defuse it.

Authorities described Rahami as a “jihadist” who begged for martyrdom and praised late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Rahami bought bomb components on eBay, made a video of himself testing out homemade explosives, and kept a journal expressing outrage at the U.S. “slaughter” of mujahideen in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria and the Palestinian Territories, federal officials allege.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Key IS leader killed in air strike in Syria

An Islamic State flag is seen in this picture illustration

By Angus McDowall  and Phil Stewart

BEIRUT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State said on Tuesday one of its most prominent and longest-serving leaders was killed in what appeared to be an American air strike in Syria, depriving the militant group of the man in charge of directing attacks overseas.

A U.S. defense official told Reuters the United States targeted Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in a Tuesday strike on a vehicle  traveling in the Syrian town of al-Bab. The official stopped short of confirming Adnani’s death, however.

Such U.S. assessments often take days and often lag behind official announcements by militant groups.

Adnani was one of the last living senior members, along with self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who founded the group and stunned the Middle East by seizing huge tracts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

As Islamic State’s spokesman, Adnani was its most visible member. As head of external operations, he was in charge of attacks overseas, including Europe, that have become an increasingly important tactic for the group as its core Iraqi and Syrian territory has been eroded by military losses.

The group reacted by saying his death would not harm it, and his killers would face “torment”, a statement in the group’s al-Naba newspaper said, according to the Site Intelligence monitoring group.

“Today, they rejoice for the killing … and then they will cry much when Allah will overpower them, with His permission, with affliction of the worst torment by the soldiers of Abu Muhammad and his brothers,” the statement said.

Advances by Iraq’s army and allied militia toward Islamic State’s most important possession of Mosul have put the group under new pressure at a moment when a U.S.-backed coalition has cut its Syrian holdings off from the Turkish border.

Those military setbacks have been accompanied by air strikes that have killed several of the group’s leaders, undermining its organizational ability and dampening its morale.

A U.S. counter-terrorism official who monitors Islamic State said Adnani’s death would hurt the militants “in the area that increasingly concerns us as the group loses more and more of its caliphate and its financial base … and turns to mounting and inspiring more attacks in Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere”.

Under Adnani’s auspices, Islamic State launched large-scale attacks, bombings and shootings on civilians in countries outside its core area, including France, Belgium and Turkey.

The official said Adnani’s roles as propaganda chief and director of external operations had become “indistinguishable” because the group uses its online messages to recruit fighters and provide instruction and inspiration for attacks.

Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency reported that Adnani was killed “while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo.” Islamic State holds territory in the province of Aleppo, but not in the city where rebels are fighting Syrian government forces.

Amaq did not say how Adnani, born Taha Subhi Falaha in Syria’s Idlib Province in 1977, was killed. Islamic State published a eulogy dated Aug. 29 but gave no further details.

INROADS INTO ISLAMIC STATE

Adnani was a Syrian from Binish in Idlib, southwest of Aleppo, who pledged allegiance to Islamic State’s predecessor, al Qaeda, more than a decade ago and was once imprisoned by U.S. forces in Iraq, according to the Brookings Institution.

He was from a well-to-do background but left Syria to travel to Iraq to fight U.S. forces there after its 2003 invasion, and only returned to his homeland after the start of its own civil war in 2011, a person who knew his family said.

He once taught theology and law in jihadi training camps, according to Brookings. A biography posted on militant websites says he grew up with a “love of mosques” and was a prolific reader.

He had been the chief propagandist for the ultra-hardline jihadist group since he declared in a June 2014 statement that it was establishing a modern-day caliphate spanning swaths of territory it had seized in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Adnani had often been the face of the Sunni militant group, such as when he issued a message in May urging attacks on the United States and Europe during the holy month of Ramadan, and as in Sept. 2014 when he called on supporters to kill Westerners throughout the world.

Recent advances by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, and by Syrian rebels backed by Turkey, have made inroads into Islamic State holdings in Aleppo province, cutting them off from the Turkish border and supply lines along it.

Iraqi army advances against the jihadist group meant Baghdad was on track to retake Mosul by the end of this year, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command General Joseph Votel said on Tuesday.

AIR STRIKE

Among senior Islamic State officials killed in air strikes this year are Abu Ali al-Anbari, Baghdadi’s formal deputy, and the group’s “minister of war”, Abu Omar al-Shishani. Adnani had joined the group under its founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

There were conflicting reports earlier on Tuesday as to where and how Adnani died.

A senior Syrian rebel official said Adnani was most probably killed in the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab in an air strike. Citing unconfirmed reports, he said Adnani was in the Aleppo region to raise morale in the face of mounting pressure.

Islamic State’s territory around Aleppo is of particular significance to the group because it is also the location of Dabiq, where an Islamic prophecy holds the last battle between Muslims and infidels will rage, heralding the end of time.

Iraq said in January that Adnani had been wounded in an air strike in the western province of Anbar and then moved to the northern city of Mosul, Islamic State’s capital in Iraq.

The United States designated him a “global terrorist” this year and said he was one of the first foreign fighters to oppose U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq since 2003 before becoming spokesman of the militant group.

There was a $5 million reward on his head under the U.S. “Rewards for Justice” program.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut, Stephen Kalin in Erbil, Iraq, Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Warren Strobel, Phil Stewart and John Walcott in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell, James Dalgleish, William Maclean and Nick Macfie)

French church attacker: from troubled child to altar killer

This still image taken from video shows the two men, Abdel-Malik Nabil Petitjean and Adel Kermiche, behind the church attack in Normandy

By Michel Rose

SAINT-ETIENNE-DU-ROUVRAY, France (Reuters) – Adel Kermiche was an attention-seeking child whose behavioral problems frequently led him to a psychiatric hospital and later a specialist school. He died a cold blooded killer who slit the throat of an elderly French priest in the name of Islamic State.

The son of a working class Franco-Algerian family living just outside the Normandy city of Rouen, the teenager flipped between model student and aggressor as a youngster. He blipped on the radar of security services in early 2015, when he made his first failed bid to reach Syria.

Kermiche burst into a church on the outskirts of Rouen during morning mass on Tuesday with another teenage Islamic militant and killed the 85-year-old father at the altar, chanting in Arabic, before they were both shot dead by police.

“He was a loner. He was a troubled soul, he was all alone in his head,” said a neighbor of the Kermiche family house in a leafy Rouen suburb where the 19-year-old was forced to live under a court surveillance order. “All he would talk about was Syria.”

A judicial source said Kermiche received regular psycho-therapy and medication between the ages of six and 13, at which point he was sent to school for pupils with behavioral problems.

What role Kermiche’s troubled background played in his conversion to a killer is not clear. Kermiche’s radicalization, however, was swift.

His mother told Swiss newspaper La Tribune de Geneve last year that Kermiche became “bewitched” by hardline Islamic ideology after militants attacked the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris in January, 2015. Two months later, he made his first attempt to reach Syria to wage jihad.

Investigators are digging into the relationship between Kermiche and Abdel-Malik Nabir Petitjean, who lived in a French alpine town 700 km (440 miles) away from Kermiche, and how the two communicated before staging their attack.

Kermiche frequently communicated with scores of followers on Telegram, a private communication channel whose encrypted message system makes tracking chatter difficult for intelligence agencies.

“SPREAD CARNAGE”

In audio posts obtained by L’Express magazine and whose content was confirmed to Reuters by a police source, Kermiche told about 200 followers that going to Syria was no longer an option because of border controls, and urged them to launch attacks on French soil instead.

“You get a knife, go to a church, spread carnage, boom. You cut off two or three heads and you’re done,” he said.

Just hours before the attack, he posted another message saying “Download what’s coming next and share it widely!!!!”. He last logged onto the app at 9:46 a.m. from inside the Saint-Etienne church, but he failed to post any video of the killing.

The attack has raised questions over how security services can clamp down on the proliferation of online videos urging disillusioned Muslims to take up arms for Islamic State (IS) and other groups, as well as channels of communication on social media.

A Telegram spokesman said its public content was moderated on a 24/7 basis and “as a result IS channels usually go down within less than a day, mostly within hours.”

But he said Telegram, like other encrypted messengers, did not have access to closed chats and communities and could not moderate their content.

In November, Telegram said it had identified and blocked 78 Islamic State-related broadcast channels in 12 languages on its site.

Conservative politicians have been scathing of President Francois Hollande’s security record, branding him soft on suspected militants. Kermiche himself was supposedly under close surveillance and wore an electronic tag.

Friends said he would routinely try to indoctrinate them.

“Each time we said something to him he would come back at us with a verse from the Koran,” said 18-year-old Redwan, a school friend of Kermiche. “He would tell us we had to fight for our Muslim brothers, that France was a country of infidels.”

He tried reaching Syria twice. The first time, he was intercepted in Germany in March, 2015, using his brother’s identity card after his family reported him missing.

Sent back to France, he was charged with terrorism offences but released on bail ahead of a trial. He was banned from leaving his local area, but two months later he slipped away and was detained in Turkey, this time traveling on his cousin’s ID card.

France held Kermiche in detention until March this year when a judge ruled him fit for release under strict supervision, despite the protests of prosecutors. Forced to surrender his passport and fitted with an electronic tag, Kermiche was restricted to leaving his parents’ home for a few hours a day.

REVENGE

Court documents first published by Le Monde and confirmed to Reuters by a judicial source showed he told the judge he regretted his attempts to leave for Syria.

“I’m a Muslim who believes in mercy, in doing good, I’m not an extremist,” he told the judge. “I want to get back my life, see my friends, get married.”

Marc Trevidic – a former anti-terrorism judge who placed Kermiche under investigation but was not involved in the decision to release him – said in a interview with L’Express that he had struck him as determined and arrogant.

“His case is typical of these individuals desperate to go, but that justice manages to keep here. So they get their revenge by doing jihad in France,” he was quoted as saying.

In his quiet neighborhood of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, local people said he was still openly discussing ways to escape again.

“My son bumped into him in March at a bus stop. He told him he had been pushed back from Turkey but would try again, he was being manipulated,” Sebastien, the father of Kermiche’s former school friend told Reuters at the local grocer.

“As a kid, he always needed to show off. He was hyperactive, very nervous, he created trouble to get attention,” he said.

Local residents said Kermiche did not come from a dysfunctional family, with a mother who taught in a local high school and a sister who trained as a doctor, adding that the wider Muslim community was well integrated in the area.

At the local mosque, Mohammed Karabila, head of the regional Muslim council, pointed at a small wall separating the mosque from Saint-Etienne’s second church as a demonstration of the harmony between the town’s religious communities. Kermiche, he said, was unknown at the mosque.

“We would have liked him to come to the mosque,” Karabila said. “But today, these kids’ mosque is Google, it’s the Internet.”

(Additional reporting by Noemie Olive and Chine Labbé in Paris; Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Editing by Richard Lough and David Stamp)

Texas father and son among scores killed in France attack

French police secure the area as the investigation continues at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A Texan and his 11-year-old son on a family vacation were among at least 84 people killed when an attacker crashed a heavy truck through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the French seaside city of Nice, officials said on Friday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott named the two as Sean Copeland and his son Brodie. Sean, 51, and Brodie were from Lakeway, about 20 miles (30 km) northwest of Austin, and were in the southern Riviera city on a European vacation, family friend Jess Davis told the Austin-American-Statesman newspaper.

French President Francois Hollande called Thursday night’s attack a terrorist act by an enemy determined to strike all nations that share France’s values.

The U.S. State Department confirmed two U.S. citizens were among the dead but did not identify them.

“We are heartbroken and in shock over the loss of Brodie Copeland, an amazing son and brother who lit up our lives, and Sean Copeland, a wonderful husband and father,” the family said in a statement.

Sean Copeland was the vice president of North and South America for Kapow Software, Davis said. Kapow is a division of Lexmark International Inc..

The governor’s office said the French flag is being flown over the governor’s mansion in Austin in remembrance of the victims. “While every heinous attack like this is tragic, this latest one hits close to home,” Abbott said in a statement.

“Sean was not only a terrific leader … but a phenomenal person who will be dearly missed,” said Lexmark spokesman Jerry Grasso.

Haley Copeland, a niece of Sean, wrote on Facebook that “losing a loved one is hard no matter the circumstances but losing a loved one in such a tragic and unexpected way is unbearable. Prayers are much appreciated.”

A photo of Brodie playing in French Riviera waters was posted on Facebook by his youth baseball league, Hill Country Baseball, which said it received it hours before the attack.

The post was followed by hundreds of comments, many offering condolences and prayers. Sean Copeland was remembered by several people in the baseball league as a loving and caring father.

A GoFundMe.com page was set up, seeking to raise $100,000 for the family.

U.S. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote on Twitter: “A truly heartbreaking loss of life in #Nice, my condolences and prayers are with the Copelands and the community of Lakeway, TX today.”

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York, David Brunnstrom in Moscow and Jon Herskovitz in Austin; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and James Dalgleish)

Truck attacker kills 84 celebrating France’s Bastille Day

A woman places a bouquet of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday in Nice

By Sophie Sassard and Michel Bernouin

NICE, France (Reuters) – An attacker at the wheel of a heavy truck plowed into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice, killing at least 84 people and injuring scores more in what President Francois Hollande called a terrorist act.

The driver, identified by police sources as a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Frenchman, also appeared to open fire before officers shot him dead. The man, named as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was not on the watch list of French intelligence services but was known to the police in connection with common crimes such as theft and violence, the sources said.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 18 people were in a critical condition after the attack on Thursday night, when the white truck zigzagged along the seafront Promenade des Anglais as a fireworks display marking the French national day ended just after 10:30 p.m. (4.30 p.m. ET).

The dead included several children, while the U.S. State Department said two American citizens had been killed. Russian student Viktoria Savchenko was also among the dead, according to the Moscow academy where she studied.

According to one city official, the rented truck careered on for up to 2 km (1.5 miles).

“People went down like nine-pins,” Jacques, who runs Le Queenie restaurant on the seafront, told France Info radio.

The attack seemed so far to be the work of a lone assailant.

Hollande said in a pre-dawn address that he was calling up military and police reservists to relieve forces worn out by enforcing a state of emergency begun in November after Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers struck Paris entertainment spots on a Friday evening, killing 130 people.

Only hours earlier he had announced the emergency would be lifted by the end of July. Following the attack, he said it would be extended by a further three months.

“France is filled with sadness by this new tragedy,” Hollande said. “There’s no denying the terrorist nature of this attack.”

Major events in France have been guarded by troops and armed police since the Nov. 13 attacks. But it appeared to have taken many minutes to halt the progress of the truck as it tore along pavements and a pedestrian zone.

One witness said she thought the attacker was firing a gun as he drove.

“I saw this enormous white truck go past at top speed,” said Suzy Wargniez, a local woman aged 65 who was watching from a cafe on the promenade. “It was shooting, shooting.”

A local government official said weapons and grenades were later found inside the vehicle which was made by Renault Trucks.

Nice-Matin newspaper said on Twitter that police were searching the attacker’s home in the Nice neighborhood of Abattoirs. It gave no source of the information.

(GRAPHIC: Map of Nice truck attack http://tmsnrt.rs/29LqLWk)

ISLAMIC STATE TARGETS FRANCE

After the Paris attacks, Islamic State said France and all nations following its path would remain at the top of its list of targets as long as they continued “their crusader campaign”, referring to action against the group in Iraq and Syria.

France is conducting air strikes and special forces operations against Islamic State, as well as training Iraqi government and Kurdish forces.

“We will further strengthen our actions in Syria and Iraq,” Hollande said, calling the tragedy – on the day France marks the 1789 revolutionary storming of the Bastille prison in Paris – an attack on liberty by fanatics who despised human rights.

France has also sent troops to west Africa to keep Islamist insurgents at bay. The country is home to the European Union’s biggest Muslim population, and critics say it has alienated some in the community through strict adherence to a secular culture that allows no place for religion in schools and civic life.

Dawn broke on Friday with pavements smeared with dried blood. Smashed children’s strollers, an uneaten baguette and other debris were strewn about the promenade. Small areas were screened off and what appeared to be bodies covered in blankets were visible through the gaps.

The truck was still where it came to rest, its windscreen riddled with bullets.

There had been no claim of responsibility on Friday morning.

The truck careered into families and friends listening to an orchestra or strolling above the beach on the Mediterranean Sea toward the grand, century-old Hotel Negresco.

Bystander Franck Sidoli said he had seen people go down. “Then the truck stopped, we were just five meters away. A woman was there, she lost her son. Her son was on the ground, bleeding,” he told Reuters at the scene.

The Paris attack in November was the bloodiest among a number in France and Belgium in the past two years. On Sunday, a weary nation had breathed a sigh of relief that the month-long Euro 2016 soccer tournament had ended without serious incident.

Four months ago, Belgian Islamists linked to the Paris attackers killed 32 people in Brussels.

Vehicle attacks have been used by isolated members of militant groups in recent years, notably in Israel, though never to such devastating effect.

Pop star Rihanna canceled a concert scheduled to be held in Nice on Friday. Riders on the Tour de France, the top event on the international cycling calendar, observed a minute’s silence before Thursday’s stage, held three hours’ drive northwest of Nice. Security has been tightened for the three-week race, which is watched by huge crowds lining the route around the country.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned what he said “appears to be a horrific terrorist attack”. Others joining him included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Pope Francis, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and officials from Spain, Sweden, the European Union, NATO and the U.N. Security Council.

Turkey, where Islamic State and Kurdish militants have staged a number of attacks in recent months, offered its condolences. “For terrorist groups, there is no difference between Turkey and France, Iraq and Belgium, and Saudi Arabia and the United States,” said President Tayyip Erdogan.

On social media, Islamic State supporters celebrated the high death toll and posted a series of images, one showing a beach purporting to be that of Nice with white stones arranged to read “IS is here to stay” in Arabic.

HIDING IN TERROR

Nice-Matin journalist Damien Allemand had been watching the firework display when the truck tore by. After taking cover in a cafe, he wrote on his paper’s website of what he saw: “Bodies every five meters, limbs … Blood. Groans.”

“The beach attendants were first on the scene. They brought water for the injured and towels, which they placed on those for whom there was no more hope.”

Officials have warned of the continuing risk of Islamist attacks in Europe. Reverses for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have raised fears it might strike again, using alienated young men from the continent’s Arab immigrant communities.

Nice, a city of 350,000, has a history as a flamboyant, aristocratic resort but is also a gritty metropolis. It has seen dozens of its Muslim residents travel to Syria to fight.

At Nice’s Pasteur hospital, medical staff were treating large numbers of injuries. Waiting for friends who were being operated on, 20-year-old Fanny told Reuters she had been lucky.

“We were all very happy, ready to celebrate all night long,” she said. “I saw a truck driving into the pedestrian area, going very fast and zig-zagging.

“The truck pushed me to the side. When I opened my eyes I saw faces I didn’t know and started asking for help … Some of my friends were not so lucky. They are having operations as we speak. It’s very hard, it’s all very traumatic.”

(Additional reporting by Matthias Blamont, Maya Nikolaeva, Michel Rose, Bate Felix, Brian Love adn Bate Felix in Paris, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Omar Fahmy in Cairo and Andreas Rinke in Ulaanbaatar; Writing by Alastair Macdonald, Andrew Callus and David Stamp; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Pravin Char)

Two French Police killed in attack claimed by Islamic State

Police vehicles at the scene where a French police commander was stabbed to death in front of his home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville

By Chine Labbé and Simon Carraud

PARIS/LES MUREAUX (Reuters) – A suspected Islamist attacker stabbed a French police commander to death outside his home and later killed his companion, a policewoman, in an attack claimed by Islamic State and denounced by the government as “an abject act of terrorism”.

The assailant, a 25-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, was jailed in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan and had been under security service surveillance, including wiretaps, at the time of the attack, police sources said.

The attacker filmed part of the assault live on the social network Facebook, according to David Thomson, a journalist specialized in radical Islamists. In his Facebook message, he linked the attack to the Euro 2016 soccer tournament now under way in France, saying: “The Euros will be a graveyard.”

The attacker, named by police and justice sources as Larossi Abballa, knifed the 42-year-old commander repeatedly in the stomach on Monday evening.

He then barricaded himself inside the house in Magnanville, a suburb some 60 km (40 miles) west of Paris, taking the man’s 36-year-old partner and their three-year-old son hostage.

Police commandos shot Abballa dead when they stormed the house after negotiations failed but they found the woman, a secretary at a police station in a nearby suburb, killed with a knife, a source close to the investigation said.

The boy was unharmed but in a state of shock.

“An abject act of terrorism was carried out yesterday in Magnanville,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency government meeting, before visiting Les Mureaux, where the police commander worked.

President Francois Hollande said the killings were “undeniably a terrorist act” and that the terrorist threat in France was very high.

Police searched Abballa’s home and other locations on Tuesday and detained two people close to him for questioning, a police source said.

The killings came as France, which has been under a state of emergency since Islamic State gunmen and bombers killed 130 people in Paris last November, was on high security alert for the Euro 2016, which began last Friday.

Police are under “extreme pressure” and “close to burn-out,” the head of FO labor union Jean-Claude Mailly told France 2 television.

ISLAMIC STATE

Islamic State claimed the attack. “God has enabled one of the caliphate’s soldiers in city of Les Mureaux near Paris to stab to death the deputy police chief and his wife,” an official broadcast on its Albayan Radio said.

If it is confirmed that the group was behind the killing, it would be the first militant strike on French soil since the multiple attacks on bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national soccer stadium in Paris in November.

Details started to emerge on the profile of the attacker. Abballa was born in the nearby town of Meulan and lived in Mantes-la-Jolie, where he had set up a fast food outlet in April, documents from the Versailles court showed.

He was given a three-year prison sentence in 2013 for helping Islamist militants go to Pakistan. His name appeared in a separate ongoing investigation into a man who went to Syria, but he was not considered a threat, a source close to the probe said.

“He wanted to do jihad (holy war), that was clear,” Marc Trevidic, a former anti-terrorism judge who was in charge of the 2013 investigation told Le Figaro newspaper. But he was seen as having a minor role in that case, he said.

Abballa had also been convicted three times on charges of aggravated theft and driving without a license, a source close to the investigation said.

“Many things are being analyzed,” a justice source said, including messages posted on social networks.

Thomson, an RFI radio journalist specialized in Islamic radicalism, wrote on his Twitter page that Abballa had filmed himself on Facebook live during the attack.

With the couple’s boy behind him he said: “I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with him,” Thomson wrote.

Islamic State’s claim of responsibility came after the Islamist militant group said it was responsible for the shooting that killed 49 people in a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

(Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, Marc Joanny, Matthieu Rosemain, Richard Lough in Paris and Muhammad Yamany in Cairo; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Paul Taylor and Dominic Evans)

Top Cleric of Yemen’s Al-Qaeda Branch Killed

A terrorist leader with a $5 million bounty on his head has been killed in Yemen.

Yemen’s Al-Qaeda branch posted a statement saying that Ibrahim al-Rubaish was killed along with other terrorists in a Sunday night drone strike.  The statement did not say where the strike that killed the terrorist leader took place.

Al-Rubaish once was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay but had been released in 2006.  He joined Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch and was considered the main theological advisor to the group.  His writings and sermons were among the most viewed in terrorist publications.

If the drone attack is verified, it will be the first drone strike since the country devolved into war when Islamic terrorists backed by Iran advanced into the nation.  Saudi Arabia has been leading a coalition of airstrikes against the terrorist’s advances.

Al-Qaeda is a rival of the advancing terrorist group and has launched their own assaults to stop the advanced of the Iranian-backed group.  U.S. intelligence sources say that as Al-Qaeda is forced to focus on stopping the terrorist advance, they have less resources and time to plot against Western interests in the region.