Tag Archives: ISIS

Islamic State threatens new attacks in Iran in video

(Reuters) – Islamic State issued a video on Wednesday threatening new attacks in the Iranian capital Tehran and calling on young Iranians to rise up and launch jihad in their country.

A man wearing a black ski mask and holding an AK-47, seated alongside two others, made the threat in a video bearing the Islamic State’s Amaq news agency logo and showing footage of two attacks in Tehran in June claimed by the militant group.

“The same way we are cutting the necks of your dogs in Iraq and Syria we will cut your necks in the center of Tehran,” the man said, speaking accented Farsi.

Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group which has sought to establish a caliphate in parts of the Gulf but is now under pressure from national armies and international groups in Syria and Iraq, sees Iran, which is predominantly Shi’ite, as one of its biggest enemies in the region.

The group killed at least 18 people in attacks on parliament in Tehran and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini on June 7.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired several missiles at Islamic State bases in Syria on June 18 in response to that attack. Iranian officials have also announced the arrests of dozens allegedly linked to the attacks.

Another portion of the video showed militants in black ski masks speaking out against Shi’ites in Arabic and threatening attacks against them in Iraq.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Islamic State still a threat as Mosul residents return to city in ruins

A member of Iraqi federal police patrols in the destroyed Old City of Mosul, Iraq August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Abu Ghazi stood smoking a cigarette outside what used to be his home in Mosul’s Old City, where only the sound of the footsteps of a few soldiers on patrol and twisted pieces of metal and fabric flapping in the wind disturb the eery silence.

“They should just bulldoze the whole thing and start over,” he said, gazing at the rows of collapsed buildings with their contents strewn across the upturned streets.

“There’s no saving it now, not like this.”

Hundreds of yards away on Wednesday Federal Police shot an Islamic State fighter as he emerged firing his gun from an underground tunnel on Makkawi Street.

Similar stories have been reported by aid workers and residents of West Mosul in the past few days.

“West Mosul is still a military zone as the search operations are ongoing for suspects, mines and explosive devices,” a military spokesman said.

“The area is still not safe for the population to return.”

However, in nearby Dawrat al Hammameel, with machines whirring in his workshop, Raad Abdelaziz said he has encouraged neighbors to return despite the still very real danger weeks after the government declared victory over the jihadists.

Just this week, his nephew, Ali, saw a militant emerge from under a house and try to injure some civilians before he was caught and handed over to the Federal Police.

But Abdelaziz, whose factory was up and running just two weeks after he returned to Mosul with his family, persists: We want people in the neighborhood to come back to their jobs.”

He is already filling orders for water and gas tanks from residents intent on rebuilding. “Life is already coming back gradually,” he said.

FLOCKING OVER THE PONTOON

Like Abu Ghazi and Raad Abdelaziz, dozens of those displaced by the fighting have returned to West Mosul, which saw some of the fiercest fighting in nine-month battle to rout the militants from their stronghold in Iraq’s second-largest city.

At the northern pontoon, one of two remaining access points between East and West Mosul, hundreds walked towards the western half of the city, carrying suitcases, household goods and livestock. Others drove across the makeshift bridge in overflowing coaches.

Ziad al Chaichi came back to reopen his tea shop in West Mosul a week ago, having fled his nearby home in March.

“Everything’s still a mess – we have nothing. No water, no electricity – we need the essentials,” he said in his shop where dainty porcelain tea pots hung from the walls. He was thankful that some people were buying his tea, including Abdelfattah, a neighbor who sat with a group of men outside.

“We want life to return here,” said Abdelfattah, 60, who came back to a partially collapsed home with his family about three weeks ago. “Not for us – the older generation – but for the children… Until then, we’re just sitting here patiently, drinking tea.”

PUNGENT REMINDER

Even in death, the militants haunt Mosul’s residents.

A handful of their bodies are lying around the Old City, a pungent reminder of the last ten months.

“We wish they would just take them away,” said Najm Abdelrazaq. But unlike with civilian bodies, the police and the military refuse to allow it, he said.

“Why should we dignify them and remove the bodies?” one soldier said, when asked why the bodies were being left to rot in the 47 degree Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) heat. “Let them rot in the streets of Mosul after what they did here.”

Returnees are concerned about the smell and the risk of disease, but they’d rather have the bodies of their neighbors recovered first.

Around the corner from Chaichi’s shop, scrawled across several collapsed houses in blue ink was: “The bodies of families lie here under the rubble.”

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Maryland man indicted for attempted murder of FBI agent, Islamic State support

(Reuters) – A federal grand jury has indicted a Maryland man on charges of attempting to murder an FBI agent and trying to provide support to Islamic State militants, U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Nelash Das, 25, of Landover Hills, was arrested by federal agents in September 2016 as he was preparing to attack a U.S. military service member. He was accompanied by a person who was a paid FBI informant, court records show.

Das, a Bangladeshi citizen who is a legal U.S. resident, was indicted for attempting to provide support to the Islamic State from October 2015 to September 2016, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The statement and the indictment gave no details about the charge of attempting to murder an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Das also was indicted on a firearms offense.

Officials were not immediately available to comment.

The three-count indictment supersedes a charge filed shortly after his arrest.

Das told the informant that he was committed to attacking a military service member, adding, “That’s my goal in life,” according to an October 2016 affidavit.

Das remains in custody and if convicted faces up to life in prison. His attorney, federal public defender Julie Stelzig, did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Dan Grebler)

U.S. denies bombing Iraqi Shi’ite militia near Syrian border

Mourners pray near the coffins of Iraqi Shi'te fighters known as Kattaib Sayeed al-Shuhadaa, who were killed near the Syrian border, during the funeral in Najaf, Iraq August 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State on Tuesday denied responsibility for an attack near the Syrian border which killed dozens of members of an Iraqi Shi’ite militia and, that group said, several of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.

A spokesman for the Iran-backed Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada militia said 36 of its fighters had been killed in the attack on Monday and 75 others were wounded and receiving treatment.

“We hold the American army responsible for this act,” the militia said in a statement late on Monday, noting that they were targeted with smart rockets.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday that initial investigation showed that Islamic State launched the attack against the militia group.

“It seems that Daesh carried out a breach using artillery and car bombs,” Abadi said in a televised press conference in Baghdad.

The U.S.-led coalition, which is attacking Islamic State militants from the air in Syria and Iraq, said the allegations were “inaccurate” and denied conducting air attacks in that area at the time.

In a statement circulated by its supporters, Islamic State claimed it was responsible for the attack and said it had captured armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition. The Iraqi Defence Ministry declined to comment.

As Islamic State is driven back by an array of forces in Iraq and Syria, its opponents and their regional patrons are vying for control of territory and seeking to secure their interests in the wider region within a shrinking battlespace.

Monday’s attack took place near At Tanf in Syria, where U.S. forces have twice before struck Iranian-backed militia in defense of a garrison used by U.S. and U.S.-backed forces.

Iran-backed Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada is part of an umbrella of Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitary groups known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, which is answerable to Baghdad, but includes factions loyal to Iran’s clerical leadership.

In an interview with Iran’s Tasnim news agency, Abu Ala Welayi, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada’s leader, accused the United States and Islamic State of jointly attacking his forces.

He said seven Revolutionary Guards had been killed, one of them being Hossein Qomi, their main commander and strategist.

No spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards was immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Louise Ireland and James Dalgleish)

Boko Haram militants kill at least 30 fishermen in northeast Nigeria: governor

Nigeria to release $1 billion from excess oil account to fight Boko Haram

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Boko Haram militants killed at least 30 fishermen in raids on communities around Lake Chad in northeastern Nigeria, the governor of Borno state, residents and military sources said on Tuesday.

The raids are part of renewed attacks by the militant Islamist group which, prior to the latest attacks, have led to at least 113 people being killed by insurgents since June 1.

Last month members of an oil prospecting team were kidnapped in the restive Lake Chad Basin region, prompting a rescue bid that left at least 37 dead including members of the team.

It was carried out by a Boko Haram faction allied to Islamic State which has been active around Lake Chad.

Kashim Shettima, governor of Borno state which is at the epicenter of the insurgency, told journalists that Boko Haram militants had attacked and killed over 30 people in different villages in the latest attacks.

Residents and military sources said the militants ambushed fishermen in a series of raids between Saturday and Monday at villages near the northeast Nigerian border town of Baga.

Baga is at Nigeria’s border with Chad, Niger and Cameroon and in 2015 was the site of fierce fighting between the insurgents and Nigerian troops.

The Boko Haram insurgency, aimed at creating an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, has killed 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million to flee their homes in the last eight years.

(Reporting by Lanre Ola, Ahmed Kingimi, Kolowale Adewale and Ardo Abdullahi in Bauchi; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Would-be suicide bomber sheds light on suspected Pakistani militant web

A policeman (L) and residents walk past a shop displaying the pictures of men, who were killed in a suicide blast on January 2015,

By Saad Sayeed and Syed Raza Hassan

SHIKARPUR, Pakistan – The confession of a Pakistani teenager who was captured moments before carrying out a suicide attack has given police a rare glimpse into a militant network they say is behind the recent surge in sectarian violence.

Usman’s testimony, a copy of which has been seen by Reuters, describes a web of radical seminaries and training and bomb making facilities stretching from eastern Afghanistan, where the young man was recruited, to Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.

Hundreds of people have been killed in attacks on Pakistan’s small Shi’ite community, heightening fears in the Sunni-dominated country of an escalation in sectarian bloodshed that has been a persistent threat for decades.

Pakistani police believe the network, which Usman says aided him on his 2,000 km journey, has also helped Islamic State spread its extremist agenda in South Asia, even without proven operational links with its core in the Middle East.

The Pakistani network brings together several known jihadists belonging to extremist groups that have targeted religious minorities for decades, police said, providing fertile ground for Islamic State’s ideology to spread.

Usman’s confession does not name Islamic State directly, but police say they believe the network that recruited and trained him was behind five deadly sectarian bombings in Pakistan, four of which have been claimed by the group based in Syria and Iraq.

“ISIS (Islamic State) has no formal structure (in Pakistan). It works on a franchise system and that is the model that is being used in Pakistan,” senior Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) officer Raja Umer Khattab told Reuters.

By that he said he meant Islamic State could claim attacks as its own, even if it had no direct role in coordinating them.

Usman, 18 at the time of the thwarted attack, is currently on death row in the town of Shikarpur, where he was caught.

Reuters was unable to contact him for this story, but Usman’s court-appointed lawyer said the family had shown no interest in the case.

“I am not sure if an appeal has been filed against the sentence, since no one from his family ever turned up to even meet Usman,” advocate Deedar Brohi told Reuters, adding that his client had been sentenced by an anti-terrorism court in March.

Police say the network emerged relatively recently – the main suspects became known to police over the last two years – but it is not clear whether it is acting alone or on the orders of other groups like Islamic State.

 

“YOU SHOULD JOIN JIHAD”

Under interrogation, Usman, arrested last September, described his recruitment in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where U.S. and Afghan forces have been fighting a local offshoot of Islamic State estimated to number a few hundred fighters.

Originally from the Pakistani valley of Swat, his family fled to Nangarhar after his father, a member of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in a drone strike.

Usman told investigators he came home one day to find his brother sitting with an older man.

“My brother said that you should join jihad … you should become a suicide bomber,” Usman said in the confession.

He left that day and traveled with the older man by bus to the Afghan province of Kandahar, where they crossed into Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

From there, they rode a motorcycle to the remote desert town of Wadh in southern Baluchistan, where Usman began his training and stayed at the home of a man called Maaz.

“In our room, Maaz took out explosives from a bag and prepared two suicide jackets,” Usman told investigators.

Police suspect Wadh is where several militant movements, including al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and other local banned groups, have been active.

The media wing of Pakistan’s military did not respond to requests for comment for this article, including how militants could use Wadh as hub.

An intelligence official, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press, denied Wadh was part of a militant network.

“No training camp in Wadh or safe (haven) for militants now,” the official said in a Whatsapp message.

After about a month in Wadh, Usman said he traveled by motorcycle with an escort on dusty back roads to Shikarpur. A few days later, he was dispatched with his explosives vest to attack a prayer meeting attended by Shi’ite Muslims.

The attack failed when one worshipper spoke to Usman in the local Sindhi language, which he could not understand. A crowd gathered and grabbed him before he could reach his detonator.

 

CENTRAL SUSPECT

Police investigators, who spoke about the case on condition of anonymity, said Usman’s confession helped them identify several key militants including a suicide vest maker and the man who oversees the network – a former Pakistani intelligence services asset named Shafiq Mengal.

“Our intelligence shows that he has 500-1,000 militants working under him and is living in the mountains,” said a senior police official.

Reuters was unable to contact Mengal or independently confirm the assertions of the police official. But his father, a prominent Baluch politician during the military regime of General Zia ul Haq in the 1980s, said his son had no links with militant networks.

“Shafiq has not given shelter to any terrorist outfit and their activities,” former Baluchistan chief minister Naseer Mengal told Reuters.

However, the older Mengal added that his son had been active in supporting Pakistani security forces in battling Baluch separatist groups.

“Shafiq fought against those elements who challenged the writ of State and were involved in target killings of innocent people and security forces,” he said.

An internal police profile of Mengal seen by Reuters said he attended an elite school in the eastern city of Lahore before completing his education at a madrassa.

According to the document, prepared by a Baluchistan police official, Mengal “was set up by the intelligence agencies to counter separatist Baloch militants” that fight the government in Baluchistan.

The report said that, more recently, it appeared Mengal shifted his efforts to helping jihadists.

The intelligence official said Mengal no longer had any association with the military.

The armed forces have launched several major offensives against groups including al Qaeda and the Taliban in recent years, but they have also been accused of using militants as proxy fighters in Kashmir and Baluchistan – a charge they deny.

 

“HATE-FILLED SERMONS”

Police said another important suspect in the network was Hafeez Brohi, already on Pakistan’s wanted terrorist list. He comes from Shikarpur, and it was at Brohi’s residence that they said the teenager stayed before the failed attack.

Usman did not name Brohi directly but said a man named Umer Hafiz, who police officials say was actually Brohi, took him from Wadh to Shikarpur by motorbike.

Usman’s police case file also identifies Brohi as one of the main suspects in the failed bombing. Case files seen by Reuters on several other sectarian attacks in Shikarpur also single him out.

The town itself, some 250 km east of Wadh but several times that distance by road, is seen as an increasingly important center of sectarian extremism, according to officials from the counter terrorism department.

Two local Shi’ite mosques were targeted by attacks in 2015.

Several new madrassas have been built in the area in recent years, and members of the Shi’ite minority suspect that they are used by Sunni hardliners to spread religious intolerance.

“The madrassas are concentrated in remote villages,” said Syed Atta Hussain Shah, the imam of the Shi’ite mosque in Shikarpur. “Preachers show up from elsewhere and stay in these madrassas and deliver hate-filled sermons.”

Police officials said they suspected Brohi was the point man for the network in southern Sindh province and was involved in the bombing at Sehwan Sharif shrine that killed 90 people – the most deadly attack in Pakistan claimed by Islamic State.

Brohi has been in hiding for the last three or four years, according to CTD officials.

Usman was sentenced to death in March along with 10 militants in absentia, including Brohi.

 

(Additional reporting by Gul Yousafzai in Quetta; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

 

Three years since Islamic State attack, Yazidi wounds still open

Yazidis visit a cemetery during a commemoration of the third anniversary of the Yazidi genocide in Sinjar region, Iraq August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Maher Chmaytelli

SINJAR, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraq’s Yazidis marked three years since Islamic State launched what the United Nations said was a genocidal campaign against them on Thursday, but their ordeal is far from over despite the ouster of the jihadist fighters.

Militants were driven out of the last part of the Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq in May. However, most Yazidis have yet to return to villages they fled when Islamic State over-ran Sinjar in the summer of 2014, killing and capturing thousands because of their faith.

Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in Islamic State captivity, and control over Sinjar is disputed by rival armed factions and their regional patrons. Justice for the crimes Yazidis suffered, including sexual enslavement, has also so far proved elusive.

“The Yazidis’ wound is still bleeding,” one man told Reuters at a ceremony attended by several thousand people including the mayor and other local dignitaries, held at a temple at the foot of the mountain that dominates Sinjar.

“The Kurds and the Iraqi government are fighting for Sinjar and we are paying the price,” said the man.

A U.N. human rights Commission of Inquiry, which declared the killings of thousands of Yazidis to be a genocide, said on Thursday that the atrocity had not ended and that the international community was not doing enough to stop it.

“The genocide is on-going and remains largely unaddressed, despite the obligation of States… to prevent and to punish the crime,” the commissioners said in a statement.

Islamic State fighters killed thousands of captured men during their attack on the Yazidis, a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State considers Yazidis as devil-worshippers.

Images of desperate Yazidis fleeing up the mountain in the blazing summer heat were broadcast around the world and helped to galvanize the United States to conduct its first air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq.

At least 9,900 of Iraq’s Yazidis were killed or kidnapped in just days in the Islamic State attack in 2014, according to a study documenting the number of Yazidis affected which could be used as evidence in any trial for genocide.

About 3,100 Yazidis were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive – and about 6,800 kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to the report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

Enslaved women and girls are now reportedly being sold by Islamic State fighters trying to escape the U.S.-led assault on their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the U.N. commission said.

DISPUTE OVER SINJAR

The array of forces that drove Islamic State out of Sinjar are now vying for control of the area near the borders of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Kurdish peshmerga forces retook around half of Sinjar in late 2015, effectively annexing it to the autonomous region they hope to convert into an independent state. A referendum on independence is due to be held in September, which the government in Baghdad opposes.

Mainly Shi’ite paramilitary groups, some backed by Iran, retook the rest of the Yazidi homeland in May, bringing them within meters of the peshmerga.

Another group, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), also gained a foothold in Sinjar and clashed with the peshmerga earlier this year. Its presence has made the area a target for Turkey, which has fought a three-decade war against the PKK on its own soil.

“People are worried about returning,” said General Ashti Kojer, the local head of Kurdish police, known as Asayish. “The (Sinjar) region has become a conflict zone”.

Kojer and another local official said the political environment was preventing international organizations from working on reconstruction and rehabilitation in Sinjar, further discouraging Yazidis from returning.

Water has to be trucked in, electricity is supplied from private generators, schools are closed, and the closest hospital is Dohuk — around three hours’ drive away.

“The lack of services and political problems are preventing families from returning,” Jalal Khalaf, the director of the mayor’s office in Sinjar, told Reuters.

BLAME GAME

In a speech at the ceremony, the Yazidi mayor of Sinjar, Mahma Xelil, said former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was responsible for the tragedy because he was in charge when the militants overran Mosul, capturing billions of dollars of weapons they used in their attack on the minority.

Other Yazidis blame the Kurds, who were defending the area at the time, for failing to resist the IS onslaught.

At the ceremony, people carried signs saying “Stop Yazidi Genocide”. Families streamed into cemeteries to remember their loved ones. Women wore bandanas saying “Genocide”.

In the city of Sinjar, posters and banners hung up on roundabouts depict harrowing scenes from the attack three years ago: families fleeing and distressed women and children.

Large parts of the city, which was also home to Muslim Kurds and Arabs, remain empty. Around 1,000 Yazidi families have returned to Sinjar since the city was retaken in 2015, according to Khalaf. The city and the surrounding area had been home to around 400,000 Yazidis.

Farhan Lazgin brought his family back to Sinjar around one year ago because he was fed up with living in a camp.

His home was in relatively good shape, but his two children have missed out on a year of school, and may fall further behind because teachers are not returning to the city.

Zeido Shammo, one of the few shopowners to have returned to the city, said he no longer trusted local forces: “We ask for international protection,” he said, echoing the sentiment of many Yazidis.

Although Islamic State has been routed from the area, Shammo said he could not feel safe until their hardline ideology was eradicated too: “Daesh (Islamic State) is defeated but we are still worried because the mentality of Daesh still exists.”

Opposite his shop, Islamic State slogans have yet to be painted over. One reads: “The State of the Caliphate Remains”.

(Writing by Isabel Coles, additional reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Peter Millership and David Stamp)

Islamic State behind Australians’ foiled Etihad meat-mincer bomb plot: police

Islamic State behind Australians' foiled Etihad meat-mincer bomb plot: police

By Tom Westbrook and Jonathan Barrett

SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to Sydney airport to catch an Etihad Airways flight carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat-mincer built at the direction of a senior Islamic State commander, police said on Friday.

Detailing one of Australia’s “most sophisticated” militant plots, police said two men, who have been charged with terror-related offences, also planned to build a device to release poisonous gas in a public area.

High-grade military explosives used to build the bomb were sent by air cargo from Turkey as part of a plot “inspired and directed” by the militant Islamic State group, police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said.

The plot targeted an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 but the bomb never made it past airport security, he said.

“This is one of the most sophisticated plots that has ever been attempted on Australian soil,” Phelan said.

Police allege that one of the two men charged late on Thursday had been introduced to Islamic State by his brother, who they said was a senior member of the group in Syria.

Communication between the accused man and Islamic State began around April, police said. Under the instruction of the unidentified Islamic State commander, the men built a “fully functioning IED” (improvised explosive device).

One of the brothers was unaware that he was carrying a bomb, disguised as a commercial meat mincer, in his luggage, and tried to check it in at the airport, police said.

“We’ll be alleging that the person who was to carry the IED on the plane had no idea they were going to be carrying an IED,” Phelan said.

Such a device would work like a large grenade, exploding with enough force to blow a hole in an airplane, even if it went off in the cargo hold, said Professor Greg Barton, a security expert at Deakin University in Melbourne.

“I think the logic would be that you pack your explosives in and seal it up, and if someone does a quick physical inspection it just looks like what it is, a meat grinder, because it’s not electrical or electronic, it’s less likely to be suspicious.”

Police said there was “a little bit of conjecture” about what happened next, but it appeared one of the accused then left the airport, taking the luggage with him. The man’s brother boarded the plane and has not since returned to Australia.

“I want to make it quite clear – it never got near screening. I don’t want anyone to suggest that it … penetrated airport security layers … because it did not. It didn’t go anywhere near it,” Phelan said.

Etihad said in a statement on Friday it had been working closely with the Australian investigation.

GAS PLOT ALSO UNCOVERED

Police arrested four men last weekend in raids across Sydney, Australia’s biggest city. One man has been released, while another is still being held without charge under special counter-terror laws.

The two who have been charged are Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat, who each face two counts of planning a terrorist act. The charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

The men did not apply for bail at a court hearing on Friday, a spokeswoman for New South Wales Courts said, and bail was formally denied. Their next scheduled court appearance is on Nov. 14.

Police also said they had uncovered the early stages of a plot to build an “improvised chemical dispersion device” designed to release hydrogen sulfide gas. Precursor chemicals and other components were found but the accused were “a long way” from making a functioning device.

Foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide, or “rotten egg gas”, is deadly in high concentrations.

Police said “preliminary and hypothetical” discussions between the accused and Islamic State suggested a plan to deploy it in a crowded place, such as public transport.

Australia, a staunch U.S. ally that has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, has been on heightened alert since 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East, or their supporters.

While there have been several “lone wolf” attacks, officials say 13 significant plots have been foiled in that time.

A gunman in a 2014 Sydney cafe siege boasted about links with Islamic State militants, although no direct ties with the group were established. The gunman and two other people were killed in the siege.

Since police revealed details of the scheme, security experts said it exposed weaknesses in air cargo screening, particularly in Turkey, where intelligence agencies have been weakened by a government purge in the wake of last year’s failed coup.

“Islamic State is now positioned in Turkey such that it can send military-grade explosive via cargo flights out of Turkey around the world,” said Deakin University’s Barton. “Now presumably Sydney is not a one-off and they are going to try this elsewhere and that’s a level of risk that we hadn’t thought of before.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Barrett and Tom Westbrook in SYDNEY; Additional reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)

Australia charges two with terrorism offences in ‘Islamic-inspired’ plot

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australian police on Thursday charged two men with planning a terrorist act, over their role in a foiled “Islamic-inspired” plot to bring down an aeroplane.

The men were among four arrested last weekend in counter-terror raids across Australia’s biggest city of Sydney.

The plot spurred Australia’s intelligence agency to raise the aviation threat level to “probable,” prompting tighter airport security measures, before the risk was downgraded to “possible” on Thursday.

Both men have been charged with two counts each of “acts done in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act”, the Australian Federal Police said in a statement.

Police did not release details of the plot, but will hold a news conference on Friday.

The target appeared to have been a commercial flight from Sydney to the Persian Gulf, a U.S. official familiar with the arrests has previously told Reuters.

The plot may have involved a bomb or poisonous gas, domestic media have said.

Police had earlier released one of the four arrested men, but the other remains in detention without charge, under special counter-terror laws.

The aviation threat level was downgraded to “possible”, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told a news conference in Perth on Thursday, since the plot had been disrupted and contained.

Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways has said it is assisting Australian federal police in the investigation.

Since 2014, Australia has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East, or their supporters.

Although the country has suffered few domestic attacks, authorities say 13 significant plots have been foiled in that time.

The 2014 Lindt cafe siege in Sydney, in which the hostage-taker and two people were killed, was Australia’s most deadly violence inspired by Islamic State militants.

(Reporting by Melanie Burton and Tom Westbrook; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Boko Haram wing tied to IS marks resurgence by kidnapping oil workers

Boko Haram wing tied to IS marks resurgence by kidnapping oil workers

By Alexis Akwagyiram

LAGOS (Reuters) – A Boko Haram faction with ties to Islamic State and responsible for the kidnapping of a Nigerian oil prospecting team which led to at least 37 people being killed has become a deadly force capable of carrying out highly-organized attacks.

Nigerian government forces have focused on crushing the best-known branch of the Islamist militant group whose leader Abubakar Shekau has led an eight-year insurgency to create an Islamic state in the northeast which has killed thousands.

But while Nigeria has claimed the capture of Shekau’s main base in the Sambisa forest and freed many of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by his faction in April 2014 in Chibok town, a rival wing has developed the capacity to carry out attacks on a larger scale.

At least 37 people, including members of the team, rescuers from the military and vigilantes, died last week when security forces tried to free those being held by the Boko Haram faction led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi who is trying to thwart government efforts to explore for oil in the Lake Chad Basin.

That wing is “much better organized than the Shekau faction” which typically stages suicide bombings in mosques and markets, said Malte Liewerscheidt, senior Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft consultancy group.

“The Shekau faction does not seem to have a clear ideology or any strategy,” said Liewerscheidt. That makes it easier for al-Barnawi’s faction to recruit whereas Shekau’s faction was not trusted by locals, he said.

And despite the assessment that it is less organized, Shekau’s faction has stepped up suicide bombings in the last few weeks, killing at least 113 people since June 1, according to a Reuters tally.

The combined attacks by the two wings marks a resurgence by the group, months after President Muhammadu Buhari’s announcement in December 2016 that Boko Haram’s stronghold in the Sambisa forest had been captured.

Boko Haram, which has killed more than 20,000 people and forced some 2.7 million to flee their homes since 2009, split last year.

The division led by Shekau, Boko Haram’s most recognizable figure known for videos taunting Nigerian authorities circulated on social media, operates in the northeastern Sambisa forest and usually deploys girls as suicide bombers.

IS NAMED AL-BARNAWI

But, since Islamic State named al-Barnawi as Boko Haram’s leader in August 2016 after the west African militants pledged allegiance the previous year, his Lake Chad-based faction has been moving fighters and ammunition across porous borders in northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

The head of a private Nigerian security firm, who did not want to be named, said al-Barnawi’s IS affiliation meant his wing benefits from sub-Saharan trade routes to ship weapons from lawless Libya where Islamic State is active.

His group has been planning a larger scale attack for some time, said a Western diplomat, speaking anonymously.

Boko Haram launched two attacks in June – the most prolonged raid on the northeastern city of Maiduguri in 18 months and an attack on a police convoy – which were more ambitious than routine suicide attacks. Shekau’s faction is widely believed to have been behind the two attacks.

Buhari has repeatedly said the insurgents are on the verge of defeat since the army, helped by neighboring countries, wrested back most of the land in Nigeria’s northeast, an area the size of Belgium, that the militants took in early 2015.

But security experts say the territorial gain has given a false impression because much of the liberated areas beyond main roads patrolled by the army remain no-go areas where displaced people cannot return to farm.

“While insurgent-held territory has been recaptured, this was conflated with a military victory,” said Ryan Cummings, director of Africa-focused risk management company Signal Risk.

“All that has happened is that Boko Haram has reverted to the asymmetrical armed campaign it had waged for the seven out of the eight years of its armed campaign against the Nigerian state,” he said.

The military has been forced to concentrate forces around Maiduguri, capital of the insurgency’s birthplace, Borno state, where Shekau’s faction has stepped up suicide bombings, which now occur on a near-daily basis.

RANSOM MONEY

A security analyst said Shekau’s wing used ransom money paid by the government to free Chibok girls to buy weapons and recruit fighters — the attacks stepped up after a deal was brokered in May to free 82 of them.

The return of experienced commanders freed in exchange for the girls had also bolstered his group, said the analyst, who asked not to be named. “The fact that they were held for some time suggests they were serious players,” he said.

Acting-President Yemi Osinbajo, in power while Buhari takes medical leave in Britain for an unspecified ailment, responded to the oil team’s abduction and frequent attacks by ordering military chiefs to “scale up their efforts” in Borno, according to a statement.

The military said armed forces chiefs relocated to Maiduguri on August 1. “This move and action are expected to give impetus to the military effort,” it said, without elaborating. The theater army commander is already based in the city.

(Additional reporting by Paul Carsten in Abuja; Editing by Ulf Laessing and Peter Millership)