Tag Archives: Attack

Year-old Paris attack probe sights new suspect, but mastermind elusive

People mourning outside of Paris attacks

By Chine Labbé

PARIS (Reuters) – French investigators believe they have identified a Belgian militant in Syria as a coordinator of the deadly Islamic State (IS) attack on Paris, but a year on they are still struggling to pinpoint the mastermind.

Just ahead of the Nov. 13 anniversary of an assault that killed 130 people and injured hundreds, victims and relatives of the dead still seek answers. And the only living person believed to be part of the hit-team, now behind bars, refuses to talk.

A painstaking investigation led by an exceptionally large team of six judicial magistrates has inched forward in search of the “remote-controllers” – those who pulled the strings from abroad, at IS bases in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere.

A source close to the investigation told Reuters this week that a new name had been added to the web of militants involved as coordinators – Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old from a Brussels suburb, now believed to be in Syria.

“It’s a very strong suspicion,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are wary of being definitive while the investigation is still under way.”

Atar was jailed in Iraq on arms-trafficking charges before ultimately joining IS ranks in Syria in 2012, and is suspected of playing a key coordination role in the Nov. 13 rampage, but not of being “mastermind in chief”, the source said.

In particular, Atar is suspected of having recruited two Iraqis who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France sports stadium north of the French capital as part of a broader series of assaults in the heart of Paris on Nov. 13 last year.

He is also suspected of being the person to whom other suicide bombers reported before blowing themselves up in further attacks in Belgium that killed 32 on March 22 this year.

SURVIVORS DISSATISFIED WITH PROBE

Atar, the latest addition to France’s suspects list, was identified in a group of photos shown to a militant arrested in Austria. But that advance means little for the survivors of the attacks, in which 90 of the 130 killed were shot or blown up by armed suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

“Even if there’s little chance of bringing the attack mastermind to justice, it would be nice to know his name,” said Emmanuel Domenach, who was at the Bataclan when it was attacked.

Sting, a veteran English pop star who has used his celebrity to champion social campaigns such as defense of forest tribes in South America, is scheduled to play on Saturday at the historic venue to mark its post-attack reopening.

Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s foreign intelligence service, told a parliamentary inquiry in May that the orchestrators of the Nov. 13 attack had been identified but declined to name names to protect his sources.

Investigators, however, have yet to make such an identification, another source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters, and do not know who Bajolet was referring to.

At one stage, it was assumed that the mastermind of the attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgo-Moroccan killed by elite French police in a spectacular assault on a flat close to Paris a few days after the Nov. 13 killings.

He was subsequently relegated by investigators to a coordinator role like Atar’s.

Three teams took part in the attack – suicide bombers at the Stade de France, gunmen who opened fire on cafes in Paris, and the squad that killed 90 at the Bataclan.

Salah Abdeslam, captured in Belgium after fleeing Paris on the night of the attack and later transferred back to France, is in solitary confinement in a jail on the edge of Paris, but refused to speak at court hearings. He is believed to be the sole survivor of the IS hit team.

The Nov. 13 attacks and subsequent assaults this year have shaken French society.

A state of emergency imposed after the Paris killings was about to be lifted when, on France’s July 14 national holiday, an IS devotee ploughed a truck into a crowd of revelers in the Riviera resort city of Nice, killing 86. About two weeks later, an Islamist slit a priest’s throat in a church in Normandy.

As armed soldiers continue to patrol the Paris landmarks where tourist numbers have thinned, Europe’s largest community of Muslims lives in greater fear of mistrustful neighbors.

Meanwhile the ruling Socialist party has torn itself apart over an abortive attempt to introduce a law stripping people convicted of terrorism of their nationality, and security and immigration promise to be major issues in next year’s presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; writing by Brian Love; editing by Andrew Callus and Mark Heinrich)

Islamic State claims attack on Pakistan police academy, 59 dead

Relatives of Police Cadets await news

By Gul Yusufzai

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Middle East-based Islamic State on Tuesday said fighters loyal to their movement attacked a police training college in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, in a raid that officials said killed 59 people and wounded more than 100.

Pakistani authorities have blamed another militant group, Lashkar-e-Janghvi, for the late-night siege, though the Islamic State claim included photographs of three alleged attackers.

Hundreds of trainees were stationed at the facility when masked gunmen stormed the college on the outskirts of Quetta late on Monday. Some cadets were taken hostage during the raid, which lasted nearly five hours. Most of the dead were cadets.

“Militants came directly into our barrack. They just barged in and started firing point-blank. We started screaming and running around in the barrack,” one police cadet who survived told media.

Other cadets spoke of jumping out of windows and cowering under beds as masked gunmen hunted them down. Video footage from inside one of the barracks showed blackened walls and rows of charred beds.

Islamic State’s Amaq news agency published the claim of responsibility, saying three IS fighters “used machine guns and grenades, then blew up their explosive vests in the crowd”.

Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, home minister of the province of Baluchistan, whose capital is Quetta, said the gunmen attacked a dormitory in the training facility, while cadets rested and slept.

“Two attackers blew up themselves, while a third one was shot in the head by security men,” Bugti said. Earlier, officials had said there were five to six gunmen.

A Reuters photographer at the scene said authorities carried out the body of a teenaged boy who they said was one of the attackers and had been shot dead by security forces.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Army chief General Raheel Sharif both traveled to Quetta after the attack and participated in a special security meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the prime minister’s office said.

One of the top military commanders in Baluchistan, General Sher Afgun, told media that calls intercepted between the attackers and their handlers suggested they were from the sectarian Sunni militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

“We came to know from the communication intercepts that there were three militants who were getting instructions from Afghanistan,” Afgun told media, adding that the Al Alami faction of LeJ was behind the attack.

LeJ, whose roots are in the heartland Punjab province, has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Baluchistan, particularly against the minority Hazara Shias. Pakistan has previously accused LeJ of colluding with al Qaeda.

Authorities launched a crackdown against LeJ last year, particularly in Punjab province. In a major blow to the organization, Malik Ishaq, the group’s leader, was killed in July 2015 alongside 13 members of the central leadership in what police say was a failed escape attempt.

“Two, three days ago we had intelligence reports of a possible attack in Quetta city, that is why security was beefed up in Quetta, but they struck at the police training college,” Sanaullah Zehri, chief minister of Baluchistan, told the Geo TV channel.

ISLAMIC STATE

Pakistan has improved its security situation in recent years but Islamist groups continue to pose a threat and stage major attacks in the mainly Muslim nation of 190 million.

Islamic State has sought to make inroads over the past year, hoping to exploit the country’s growing sectarian divisions.

Monday night’s assault on the police college was the deadliest in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed 70 people in an attack on mourners gathered at a hospital in Quetta in August.

The August attack was claimed by IS, but also by a Pakistani Taliban faction, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar.

The military had dismissed previous Islamic State claims of responsibility and last month said it had crushed the Middle East-based group’s attempt to expand in Pakistan. It also dismissed previous IS claims of responsibility as ‘propaganda’.

A photograph of the three alleged attackers released by Islamic State showed one individual with a striking resemblance to the picture of a dead gunman taken by a policeman inside the college, and shared with Reuters.

Analysts say Islamic State clearly has a presence in Pakistan and there is growing evidence that some local groups are working with IS.

“The problem with this government is that it seems to be in a complete state of denial,” said Zahid Hussain, an Islamabad-based security analyst.

HIDING UNDER BEDS

Wounded cadets spoke of scurrying for cover after being woken by the sound of bullets.

“I was asleep, my friends were there as well, and we took cover under the beds,” one unidentified cadet told Geo TV. “My friends were shot, but I only received a (small) wound on my head.”

Another cadet said he did not have ammunition to fight back.

Officials said the attackers targeted the center’s hostel, where around 200 to 250 police recruits were resting. At least three explosions were reported at the scene by media.

Quetta has long been regarded as a base for the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership has regularly held meetings there.

Baluchistan is no stranger to violence, with separatist fighters launching regular attacks on security forces for nearly a decade and the military striking back.

Militants, particularly sectarian groups, have also launched a campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations of minority Shias.

Attacks are becoming rarer but security forces need to be more alert, Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan warned.

“Our problem is that when an attack happens, we are alert for a week after, ten days later, until 20 days pass, (but) then it goes back to business as usual,” he said.

“We need to be alert all the time.”

(Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in KARACHI, and Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Kay Johnson, Asad Hashim in ISLAMABAD, and Mohamed el Sherif in CAIRO; Writing by Kay Johnson, Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Catherine Evans and Clarence Fernandez)

Swedish refugee asylum center burns down in suspected arson attack

Firefighters extinguish a fire that broke out at a refugee accommodation in Fagersjo, south of Stockholm, Sweden on the night of October 16,

STOCKHOLM, Oct 21 (Reuters) – A Swedish asylum centre burned down overnight in a suspected attack by arsonists, police said on Friday, the second incident of its kind in a week in the Stockholm region.

Staff alerted police in the early hours of Friday after hearing noises and seeing lights outside the building, Stockholm police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said.

A fire then broke out, he said, adding police had opened an investigation. “Things do not just catch fire outside (a house) for no reason.”

Two staff and nine residents were at the centre at the time of the blaze, during which no one was hurt, Lindgren said.

Sweden reversed decades of generous immigration policies last year, introducing border controls and tougher laws after an a record number of asylum applications that coincided with unprecedented flows of refugees entering Europe to escape war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

Police have been keeping a close watch on the country’s asylum centres, several of which have since been attacked,
including one in southern Stockholm that caught fire early last Sunday.

No one was injured either in that blaze, which led to 37 residents being evacuated.

Lindgren said there was no indication the two fires were linked, or that the risk of attacks against asylum centres had increased.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; editing by John Stonestreet)

Nice prepares to remember attack victims in special ceremony

A woman stands near a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS

NICE, France (Reuters) – Three months after a man plowed his truck into crowds on France’s national day in Nice, the southern coastal city is trying to recover as it prepares to remember the 86 victims in a national ceremony of remembrance.

Tributes line the sea-front promenade along which Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck, mowing down people watching fireworks on France’s July 14 Bastille Day, before police shot him dead.

Curious visitors and grieving locals stop to look at bouquets of flowers, toys and yellowing notes left in memory of the victims.

“We haven’t forgotten it. People are less trusting, more nervous and the atmosphere is heavier,” said Stephanie Marton, a mother of five who was on the promenade with her children that night. “(It) is not at all like what it was before July 14.”

Marton said the family, who threw themselves onto the ground out of the way of the truck hurtling toward them, still lives in the shadow of the attack.

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France,

People walk past a memorial to the victims of the July 14 attack on the Promenade des Anglais, two days before a national tribute in Nice, France, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

“Three months later, it’s still in their heads and it’s still hard for them,” she said. “They still have nightmares at night – and I sometimes get them too – and they find it really hard to be near the promenade.”

Nice was due to hold a national ceremony of remembrance, led by French President Francois Hollande, on Friday, exactly three months after the attack.

But a statement from his Elysee Palace on Thursday said the event, on a hill overlooking the French Riviera and attended by survivors and victims’ families, will now take place on Saturday due to bad weather.

(Reporting by Michel Bernouin; Writing by Johnny Cotton and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Suicide bombers hit Shi’ite gatherings in Baghdad, at least 11 dead: police

Member of Si

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Suicide bombers attacked two Shi’ite Muslim processions in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 40, police and medical sources said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts at the Shi’ite events commemorating the slaying of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein.

A bomber detonated his explosive vest in the middle of one Shi’ite procession in the Amil district of southern Baghdad, killing six and wounding 25, the sources said.

A similar attack hit a procession in the eastern Mashtal district, killing five and wounding 18, the sources added.

(Reporting by Karem Raheem and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Assailant shot outside Israeli embassy in Turkey: officials

Riot police near Israeli Embassy in Turkey

By Umit Bektas and Jeffrey Heller

ANKARA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A suspected assailant was shot and wounded near the Israeli embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Wednesday, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman and Turkish police said.

“The staff is safe. The attacker was wounded before he reached the embassy,” the spokesman said in a text message. “The assailant was shot and wounded by a local security man.”

Broadcaster CNN Turk said the suspect, whom it described as mentally unstable, had attempted a knife attack.

Turkish police told Reuters the assailant shouted “Allahu akbar”, or “God is Greatest”, outside the embassy before he was shot in the leg.

Police were examining his bag but had so far not attempted to detonate it, a Reuters cameraman at the scene said. The area outside the embassy had been cordoned off.

The assailant was apprehended at the outer perimeter of the secured zone around the embassy, the Israeli spokesman said.

Private broadcaster NTV identified the suspect as a man from the central city of Konya.

It was not immediately clear if there was a second would-be assailant, but Turkish media reports had initially suggested that there had been two attackers.

Turkey faces multiple security threats, including Islamic State militants, who have been blamed for bombings in Istanbul and elsewhere, and Kurdish militants, following the resumption of a three-decade insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast last year.

(Additional Reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Daren Butler)

Man wielding meat cleaver slices New York City patrolman’s head

Police investigate the scene where a man was shot by police in Manhattan, New York, U.S., September 15, 2016

(Reuters) – An assailant wielding a meat cleaver struck a New York City police officer in the head on Thursday in midtown Manhattan, and two other officers chasing the suspect were also hurt during the incident, police said.

The attack occurred after two on-duty officers were responding to reports of a crime in progress just before 5 p.m. local time near Madison Square Garden, NYPD spokeswoman Sophia Mason said.

Three officers were taken to an area hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Mason said the man drew the cleaver from his waist band after two of the officers confronted him, and then the suspect ran. A stun gun had no apparent affect on him, Mason said.

A third officer, who was off duty and in the area at the time, helped chase the suspect, who ran down the street with the large butcher’s knife in his hand, Mason said.

At one point, the suspect jumped on top of a police car and, as officers attempted to subdue him, the off-duty officer was struck in the head by the cleaver, causing a gash, Mason said. It was not immediately clear how or when the other two officers were injured.

After the officer was struck, police opened fire on the suspect, striking him multiple times, Mason said. The man was in police custody and being treated at an area hospital, she added. The extent of his injuries was not immediately available.

“They shot him up,” the New York Daily News quoted a witness as saying. “He was hit five or six times. He was laid up on the sidewalk. It looked like he was dead.”

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Dan Grebler, David Gregorio and Bill Rigby)

Party lines split U.S. on terror threat 15 years after 9/11: poll

An American flag flies near the base of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York on September 11 2001

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks nearing, Americans are sharply divided on party lines over the threat of a major terrorist attack on the United States, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

Forty percent of Americans say the ability of terrorists to strike the United States is greater than it was at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to the Pew Research Center survey of 1,201 adults.

That share is up 6 percentage points since November 2013 and marks the highest percentage with that view over the past 14 years. Thirty-one percent of respondents say terrorists’ abilities to attack are the same, and a quarter say it is less.

“The growth in the belief that terrorists are now better able to launch a major strike on the U.S. has come almost entirely among Republicans,” the Pew Research Center said.

Fifty-eight percent of Republicans say terrorists’ ability to hit the United States in a major attack is greater than at the time of 9/11, up 18 points since 2013, it said.

The poll results marked the first time that a majority in either political party had expressed that opinion, the Pew center said.

About a third of independents, or 34 percent, and 31 percent of Democrats say terrorists are better able to strike the United States than they were then. Those views are up 2 percentage points each from three years ago, according to the survey.

The partisan divide is in line with other opinion sampling on the U.S. government’s ability to deal with terrorism, Pew said.

In an April Pew poll, three-quarters of Democrats said the government was doing very or fairly well in reducing the threat from terrorism, while 29 percent of Republicans said the same.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are a powerful memory for many Americans. Almost 3,000 people died when hijackers slammed airliners into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field

Ninety-one percent of the adults surveyed remember exactly where they were or what they were doing when they heard news about the attacks. Among those under 30, 83 percent said the same.

The Pew survey was conducted by telephone from Aug. 23 to Sept. 2. The margin of error is 3.2 percentage points, meaning results could vary that much either way.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Arrested militants planned attack on Paris railway station, France says

French police investigate

By Gérard Bon

PARIS (Reuters) – Three women arrested in connection with a car loaded with gas cylinders found in a side road near Notre Dame cathedral had been planning an attack on a Paris railway station, the French interior ministry said.

“An alert has been issued to all stations but they had planned to attack the Gare de Lyon on Thursday,” a ministry official said on Friday after the arrests overnight.

The Gare de Lyon station is in the southeast of the capital, less than 3 kilometers from the cathedral which marks the center.

The official also said the youngest of the three women, a 19 year-old whose father was the owner of the car and who was already suspected by police of wanting to go and fight for Islamic State in Syria, had written a letter pledging allegiance to the militant Islamist group.

The discovery on Saturday night of the Peugeot 607 laden with seven gas cylinders, six of them full, triggered a terrorism investigation and revived fears about further attacks in a country where Islamist militants have killed more than 230 people since January, 2015.

Scores of religiously radicalize people of French and other nationalities are in Syria and Iraq fighting for Islamic State. Many of those involved in recent attacks in France have either taken part in the fighting or had plans to.

France is among the countries bombing Islamic State strongholds, and the group has urged supporters to launch more attacks on French soil.

One of the women stabbed a police officer during her arrest before being shot and wounded, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said late on Thursday. Other officials said it was the teenager who attacked the officer.

TV footage showed a policeman leaving the scene of the arrests on the outskirst of Paris carrying a large knife.

Police sources said no detonator had been found in the car, though the vehicle also contained three jerry cans of diesel fuel.

When it was found in the early hours of Sunday morning the car had no registration plates and was left with its hazard lights flashing.

“These three women aged 39, 23 and 19 had been radicalize, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act,” Cazeneuve said in a televised statement. They bring to seven the number of people detained since Tuesday.

The arrests took place in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, some 30 km (20 miles) south-east of Paris.

The car’s owner was taken into custody earlier this week but later released. He had gone to police on Sunday to report that his daughter had disappeared with his car, officials said.

(Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Richard Lough and Toby Chopra)

Germany to tell people to stockpile food and water in case of attacks

Police barrier is pictured at the train station in Grafing

BERLIN (Reuters) – For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the German government plans to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in case of an attack or catastrophe, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported on Sunday.

Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage by a mentally unstable teenager last month. Berlin announced measures earlier this month to spend considerably more on its police and security forces and to create a special unit to counter cyber crime and terrorism.

“The population will be obliged to hold an individual supply of food for ten days,” the newspaper quoted the government’s “Concept for Civil Defence” – which has been prepared by the Interior Ministry – as saying.

The paper said a parliamentary committee had originally commissioned the civil defense strategy in 2012.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the plan would be discussed by the cabinet on Wednesday and presented by the minister that afternoon. He declined to give any details on the content.

People will be required to stockpile enough drinking water to last for five days, according to the plan, the paper said.

The 69-page report does not see an attack on Germany’s territory, which would require a conventional style of national defense, as likely.

However, the precautionary measures demand that people “prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future,” the paper cited the report as saying.

It also mentions the necessity of a reliable alarm system, better structural protection of buildings and more capacity in the health system, the paper said.

A further priority should be more support of the armed forces by civilians, it added.

Germany’s Defence Minister said earlier this month the country lay in the “crosshairs of terrorism” and pressed for plans for the military to train more closely with police in preparing for potential large-scale militant attacks.

(Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Andrew Bolton)