Israel says ISIS could attack it and Jordan after Syria setbacks

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Islamic State’s battleground setbacks in Syria have increased the chance of an attack by the insurgents or their allies on Israel and Jordan, Israel’s military chief said on Monday. 

While focused on shoring up its Syrian and Iraqi fiefdoms, Islamic State has in recent months stepped up attacks abroad and issued public threats to include Israel among its targets.

Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, chief of Israel’s armed forces, said that with Russia intervening last year to help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the insurgents’ advance had been largely arrested.

An exception to this, Eizenkot said, was in the southern Syrian border nexus with Israel and Jordan.

“The successes against ISIS raise the probability, in my eyes, that we will see them turning their guns both against us and against the Jordanians,” he told a conference hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for International Security Studies.

Islamic State itself does not have a strong presence on Syria’s south-west border region, but one of several Islamist forces in the area, the Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade, is believed by its opponents to be linked to the ultra-hardline militant group.

It has fought rival insurgent forces from Syria’s al Qaeda offshoot, the Nusra Front, and Ahrar al-Sham for control of territory next to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and close to northern Jordan.

“In their strategic logic, there is a certain logic in connecting Israel with Jordan,” Eizenkot said, and in the border area “they are not experiencing what the organization and other global jihadi groups are experiencing inside Syria”.

A voice recording release on social media three weeks ago and attributed to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi warned that Israel was a target.

Jordan, one of two Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with Israel, has largely weathered the upheaval in much of the Middle East over the past five years, though it has absorbed major refugee influxes from Syria and Iraq, another neighbor wrecked by Islamic State insurgents. 

Jordan has low-key military backing from the United States and Israel, cooperation that the parties rarely discuss publicly.

Israel has formally kept out of the almost five-year-old Syrian civil war, though it has launched occasional bombing raids to thwart suspected transfers of advanced arms by Assad’s government to allied Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.

Hezbollah, which fought Israel’s technologically superior military to standstill in the 2006 Lebanon war, remained a major threat and stood to receive boosted support from its Iranian patron thanks to the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran, Eizenkot said.

But he also described Hezbollah as cautious to open a new front with Israel, noting that while the Shi’ite militia had gained combat experience reinforcing Syrian government forces against Sunni Islamist-led rebels, it had also suffered losses.

Some 1,300 Hezbollah guerrillas had been killed and almost another 5,000 wounded in Syria, out of a regular fighting force of 20,000 and a reservist force of 20,000-25,000, Eizenkot said.

Hezbollah generally does not publish details on its casualties, and says it is ready to fight Israel again.

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

Morocco arrests Belgian national allegedly tied to Paris attackers

RABAT (Reuters) – Moroccan authorities have arrested a Belgian national of local origin directly linked to the attackers who carried out the Paris shootings and bombings in November that killed 130 people, the government said in a statement on Monday.

The interior ministry gave only the suspect’s initials in Arabic and said he fought in Syria with al-Nusra front before joining the Islamic State.

The suspect, whose initials could be translated to J.A. or G.A., was arrested on Jan. 15 in the city of Mohammedia, the statement added. “He went to Syria with one of the suicide bombers of Saint Denis,” it said.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year-old Belgian militant who authorities said was the ringleader of the Paris attacks, was killed with other suspects days after when police raided a house in the Saint Denis suburb.

Investigations showed that during his stay in Syria he has built solid ties with Islamic State leaders including the ringleader of the Paris attacks.

The suspect was trained to handle different weapons and guerrilla tactics but left Syria through Turkey, Germany, Belgium then Netherlands from where he came to Morocco.

Morocco provided the tip-off that enabled French police to locate Abaaoud, has been holding Abaaoud’s brother Yassine since October and has issued an arrest warrant for Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the attacks and is on the run.

(Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Patrick Markey/Jeremy Gaunt)

Indonesia kills one militant after ISIS attack, searches for more

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian police killed one suspected militant and arrested two more in raids across the country on Friday, a day after an attack by Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of the Southeast Asian nation’s capital.

Just seven people were killed in Thursday’s late-morning siege near a busy shopping district, despite multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of the dead were the attackers themselves.

Nevertheless, it was the first time the radical group has targeted the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, and the brazenness of the attack suggested a new brand of militancy in a country more used to low-level strikes on police.

Police chiefs across the country were on high alert, some embassies in Jakarta were closed for the day and security was stepped up on the resort island of Bali, a draw for tourists from Australia and other Asian countries.

“It’s clear that the (Jakarta attackers) didn’t set this up themselves. For this, we are searching for the networks and who was involved in this action,” said Anton Charliyan, national police spokesman.

Security forces killed one suspected militant in a gun battle in Central Sulawesi, while two others were arrested in the city of Cirebon in West Java.

The three were believed to be Islamic State supporters, but not directly connected to the Jakarta attack, police said.

Returning to the area outside Jakarta’s oldest department store, Sarinah, where Thursday’s attack unfolded, the city’s police chief said the rise of Islamic State was a cause for serious concern.

“We need to strengthen our response and preventive measures, including legislation to prevent them … and we hope our counterparts in other countries can work together because it is not home-grown terrorism, it is part of the ISIS network,” Tito Karnavian said, using an acronym for the Syria-based group.

In response to the Jakarta attacks, Philippine President Benigno Aquino ordered security forces to strengthen defenses of “soft” targets. Malaysia placed the country on its highest alert.

Experts agree that there is a growing threat from radicalized Muslims inspired by Islamic State, some of whom may have fought with the group in Syria.

However, they said the low death toll on Thursday pointed to the involvement of poorly trained local militants whose weapons were crude.

An Indonesian and a man of dual Canadian-Algerian nationality were killed along with the attackers. Twenty-four people were seriously wounded, including an Austrian, a German and a Dutchman.

Islamic State said in its claim of responsibility that “a group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta”.

Police confirmed that Islamic State was responsible and named an Indonesian militant, Bahrun Naim, as the mastermind.

They believe Naim leads a militant network known as Katibah Nusantara and is pulling strings from Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.

“His vision is to unite all ISIS supporting elements in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines,” Jakarta police chief Karnavian said.

Islamist militants from those three countries have a record of working together, and several Malaysians are known to have carried out suicide attacks in the Middle East.

ECHOES OF PARIS

Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the siege in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November.

In a recent blog post, entitled “Lessons from the Paris Attacks”, Naim had urged his Indonesian audience to study the planning, targeting, timing, coordination, security and courage of the jihadis in the French capital.

The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants, and counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State.

There was a spate of militant attacks in Indonesia in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by Islamic State.

Many experts believe, however, that Indonesia, a vibrant democracy where the vast majority of Muslims practise a moderate form of Islam, is not likely to be tipped into a cauldron of radicalism.

(Additional reporting by the Jakarta bureau and Manuel Mogato in Manila; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Robert Birsel and Mike Collett-White)

Widow sues Twitter for allegedly giving voice to Islamic State

(Reuters) – Twitter Inc is being sued by the widow of an American killed in Jordan who accuses the social media company of giving a voice to Islamic State, adding to the pressure to crack down on online propaganda linked to terrorism.

Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband Lloyd died in the Nov. 9 attack on the police training center in Amman, said Twitter knowingly let the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits.

She said the San Francisco-based company had until recently given Islamic State, also known as ISIS, an “unfettered” ability to maintain official Twitter accounts.

“Without Twitter, the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most-feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” according to the complaint filed on Wednesday in the federal court in Oakland, California.

Fields accused Twitter of violating the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows triple damages for providing material support to terrorists.

Her lawyer said he believes it is the first case in which a social media company is accused of violating that federal law.

The lawsuit may add to pressure that social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook Inc face to take down posts associated with terrorist groups.

“While we believe the lawsuit is without merit, we are deeply saddened to hear of this family’s terrible loss,” Twitter said in a statement about the civil lawsuit. “Violent threats and the promotion of terrorism deserve no place on Twitter and, like other social networks, our rules make that clear.”

PRESSURE ON SILICON VALLEY

Last Friday, the Obama administration set up a task force to crack down on extremist groups using the Internet to advance their goals, find recruits and plan attacks such as recent killings in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

Senior national security officials from the administration also met with technology executives in Silicon Valley last week to discuss what more could be done to counter Islamist militants.

Fields, the widow, may face an uphill battle to prove Twitter knew or should have known that its technology was helping terrorists.

“We certainly know social media plays an important role in allowing ISIS to recruit foreign fighters,” said Jimmy Gurule, a University of Notre Dame law professor and former U.S. Treasury Department official specializing in terrorist financing.

“But at the end of the day, is there a sufficient nexus between ISIS’ use of Twitter and acts of terror?” he continued. “I’m not saying you can’t show it but it’s a real challenge.”

Lloyd “Carl” Fields was among five people killed in the “lone wolf” attack at the police training center by Jordanian police officer Anwar Abu Zeid.

The government contractor, who had been a police officer for a decade, was in Jordan to train police from that country, Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

Joshua Arisohn, a partner at Bursor & Fisher representing Tamara Fields, said his client can prevail by showing that Twitter’s activity was a substantial factor in her late husband’s death, and that the death could have been foreseen.

“Given the significant support that Twitter has knowingly provided to ISIS over the years, we’re confident that we can meet this standard,” Arisohn said in an email.

TAKEDOWNS

Islamic State, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, has used the Internet regularly to spread its message.

The Brookings Institution think tank has estimated that Islamic State supporters operated at least 46,000 Twitter accounts between September and December 2014.

Social media companies are not uniform in handling requests from authorities to take down online material. Some technology executives worry that being too quick to remove suspect posts could invite endless and often meritless demands for takedowns.

Twitter has positioned itself as a defender of free speech and been reluctant to act as censor.

According to its online “transparency report,” Twitter honored none of the 25 requests from U.S. government and law enforcement authorities to remove posts between January and June 2015.

Worldwide, Twitter said it honored 42 percent of the 1,003 removal requests from governments, law enforcement and courts during that period.

More than two-thirds of the requests came from Turkey. Twitter said it withheld 158 accounts and 2,354 tweets during the period.

In December, Twitter updated its policies for policing content to explicitly prohibit “hateful conduct.”

Gary Osen, a lawyer who in 2014 convinced a Brooklyn, New York jury to hold Jordan’s Arab Bank Plc liable for handling transactions for Palestinian militant group Hamas, said there is “no question” the Anti-Terrorism Act covers Fields’ claims, but that showing Twitter’s “knowledge or willful blindness” is the challenge.

Fields said she met that standard, citing Twitter’s alleged resistance to numerous requests from U.S. government officials, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and others to do more to keep Islamic State off Twitter.

Arab Bank settled its case in August.

The case is Fields v. Twitter Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 16-00213.

(Additional reporting by Dena Aubin and Jonathan Weber; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Alistair Bell)

ISIS claims responsibility for Jakarta attack, its first strike at Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Islamic State said it was behind an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta on Thursday, the first time the radical group has targeted the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Just seven people were killed despite multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of them were the attackers themselves, but the brazenness of their siege suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on police are common.

It took security forces about three hours to end the attack near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, Jakarta’s oldest department store, after a team of militants traded gunfire with police and blew themselves up.

An Indonesian and a Canadian were killed in the attack. Twenty people, including an Algerian, Austrian, German and Dutchman, were wounded.

“A group of soldiers of the caliphate in Indonesia targeted a gathering from the crusader alliance that fights the Islamic State in Jakarta,” the group said in a statement. It added that 15 people were killed.

Jakarta’s police chief told reporters: “ISIS is behind this attack definitely,” using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it.

Police believe Naim is in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theater. But the low death toll pointed to the involvement of local militants whose weapons were rudimentary, experts said.

In a sign of public unease, a bang caused by a tire bursting triggered a bomb scare that sent police cars rushing back to the scene hours after the attack.

“The president has said the nation and the people should not be scared and should not be defeated by acts of terror,” said palace spokesman Ari Dwipayana.

ARMORED CARS, HELICOPTERS

“The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,” Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.

Police responded in force within minutes. Black armored cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighborhood as helicopters buzzed overhead.

Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian said one man entered the Starbucks cafe and blew himself up, wounding several inside.

As people poured out of the cafe, two waiting gunmen opened fire on them. At the same time, two militants attacked a police traffic post nearby, using what he described as hand grenade-like bombs.

After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city center’s notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.

Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November.

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis, who was in Jakarta recently to bolster security coordination, told the Australian newspaper he had “no doubt” Islamic State was seeking to establish a “distant caliphate” in Indonesia.

The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July 2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants.

Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries.

HISTORY OF ATTACKS

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practise a moderate form of Islam.

The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s, the deadliest of which was a nightclub bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and Indonesians who return after fighting with the group.

Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State increased after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14 people in California in December.

On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic State.

Speaking in London, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Thursday’s attack.

“There is nothing in any act of terror that offers anything but death and destruction. And so we stand together, all of us, united in our efforts to eliminate those who choose terror,” he said.

Harits Abu Ulya, a expert on militancy who knows Bahrun Naim, the militant named by Indonesian authorities, said he expected more attacks.

“This is an indication that he has been learning from the Paris attacks and he has studied the strategy,” he said. “I still have doubts about the capability of the local militants to carry out attacks on a bigger scale. But it is a possibility.”

(Aditional reporting by Fergus Jensen, Gayatri Suroyo, Nilufar Rizki, Eveline Danubrata, Randy Fabi and Fransiska Nangoy; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mike Collett-White)

Special anti-ISIS targeting force ‘now in place’ in Iraq, U.S. says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new U.S. force of special operations troops has arrived in Iraq and is preparing to work with Iraqi forces to go after Islamic State targets, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.

Carter disclosed the deployment in a broad speech to U.S. soldiers that sought to underscore American efforts to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State, both in Iraq and Syria.

“The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL’s fighters and commanders,” Carter said at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

While the force was expected to number only about 200, its deployment marks the latest expansion of U.S. military pressure on Islamic State. It also exposes American forces to greater risk, something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly.

The force is separate from another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011.

Carter said that smaller group of forces had already established contact with rebels, as well as new targets for airstrikes and “strikes of all kinds.”

“These operators have helped focus the efforts of the local, capable forces against key ISIL vulnerabilities, including their lines of communication,” Carter said.

Republicans have sought to portray U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategy to defeat Islamic State as flawed and insufficient, as the militants plot or inspire attacks far beyond their self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Obama, in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, warned against overstating the fight against Islamic State militants, but said his administration is focused on destroying the extremist group.

Carter’s speech emphasized advances by Iraqi forces — including retaking control of the city of Ramadi — and by U.S.-backed rebels in Syria.

“President Obama is committed to doing what it takes – as opportunities arise, as we see what works, and as the enemy adapts – until ISIL is delivered a lasting defeat,” he said.

Carter was addressing soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, 1,800 of whom will deploy to Iraq in the coming months, largely to train local forces.

Carter also flagged a meeting next week in Paris with defense ministers from six nations — France, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alan Crosby)

Istanbul bomber entered Turkey as refugee from Syria, PM says

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An Islamic State suicide bomber who killed 10 German tourists in the heart of Istanbul’s historic district entered Turkey as a refugee from Syria and went undetected as he was not on any watch lists, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday.

The bomber, who blew himself up among groups of tourists on Tuesday near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, the top sites in one of the world’s most visited cities, had registered with immigration authorities in the city a week ago.

Turkey has kept an open border to refugees from Syria’s civil war and is now home to more than 2.2 million, the world’s largest refugee population. But its border has also been used by foreign fighters seeking to join Islamic State or return from its ranks to commit atrocities abroad.

“This individual was not somebody under surveillance. He entered Turkey normally, as a refugee, as someone looking for shelter,” Davutoglu told a news conference, adding he had been identified from fragments of his skull, face and nails.

“After the attack his connections were unveiled. Among these links, apart from Daesh, we have the suspicion that there could be certain powers using Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.

Turkey accuses Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his allies including Iran and Russia, of cooperating with Islamic State in the Syrian regime’s effort to destroy Syrian opposition forces.

Turkey, which like Germany is a member of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, has become a target for the radical Sunni militants.

It was hit by two major bombings last year blamed on the group, in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100 people in the worst attack of its kind on Turkish soil.

Asked if Turkey planned retaliatory air strikes on Islamic State, Davutoglu said Ankara would act at a time and in a manner that it saw fit. He pointed out the Turkish military had hit Islamic State targets abroad after the Suruc and Ankara attacks.

But he said Russia’s entry into the Syrian war was a complicating factor. Turkish war planes have not flown in Syrian air space since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November, triggering a diplomatic row with Moscow.

“They (the Russian air force) shouldn’t obstruct Turkey’s fight against Daesh … Right now unfortunately there is such a barrier,” Davutoglu said. “Certain countries are in an obstructive attitude in terms of Turkey’s air bombardments. They should either destroy Daesh themselves or allow us to do it.”

TOUR GUIDE YELLED “RUN”

Asked about a report in the Turkish media that the bomber had registered at an immigration office in Istanbul a week ago, Interior Minister Efkan Ala earlier confirmed that his fingerprints were on record with the authorities.

The Haberturk newspaper published what it said was a CCTV image of the man, named in some local media as Saudi-born Nabil Fadli, at an Istanbul immigration office on Jan. 5. Turkish officials have said he was born in 1988.

Foreign tourists and Turks paid their respects at the site of the attack early on Wednesday. Scarves with the Bayern Munich soccer club emblem were left along with carnations and roses at the scene, before Turkish police sealed off the area.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, visiting Istanbul, said there were no indications Germans had been deliberately targeted and that he saw no reason for people to change travel plans to Turkey. He said Germany stood resolutely by Turkey’s side in the fight against terrorism.

“If the terrorists aimed to disturb, destroy or jeopardize cooperation between partners, they achieved the opposite. Germany and Turkey are becoming even closer,” he said, adding there was no link to Germany’s role in the fight on terrorism.

Davutoglu praised the German group’s Turkish guide who, according to the Hurriyet newspaper, yelled “run” after seeing the bomber standing among the tourists and pulling a pin on his explosives, enabling some of them to get away.

Witnesses said the square was not packed at the time of the explosion, but that several groups of tourists were there.

“I didn’t finish the tour, you know, the tour I had bought,” said Jostein Nielsen, a wounded Norwegian tourist, as he waited on a stretcher at Istanbul airport, his left leg bandaged.

“I still have to go to the Blue Mosque and the old Turkish Bazaar … We have no hard feelings towards Turkey. We know there are some mad people out there,” he said.

DETENTIONS CONTINUE

Davutoglu said the security forces had detained four people suspected of links to the suicide bomber, and that six of those wounded were still in hospital. The German foreign ministry said earlier five Germans were still in intensive care.

A Peruvian national was also injured in the blast.

Turkey has rounded up hundreds of suspected Islamic State members since launching what it called a “synchronized war on terror” last July, raids which continued on Wednesday.

Since the attack, police have detained a total of 65 people including 16 foreign nationals in six Turkish cities, the Dogan news agency reported.

The Russian foreign ministry confirmed three of those detained were Russian nationals, but it was not immediately clear whether there was any connection to the Istanbul attack, for which there has been no claim of responsibility.

Turkey has faced criticism at home and abroad for failing to do more to fight Islamic State networks, but Ala, the interior minister, defended Turkey’s record, saying 200 suspects had been detained just a week before the Istanbul blast.

He said Turkey, which has repeatedly called on foreign intelligence agencies to do more to prevent would-be jihadists from traveling to its shores, had detained 3,318 people for suspected links to Islamic State and other radical groups since Syria’s conflict began. Of that number, 847 were subsequently arrested, most of them foreigners.

(Additional reporting by Melih Aslan in Istanbul, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Michelle Martin in Berlin, Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Giles Elgood and Janet McBride)

Belgium identifies three Paris attack plot safe houses

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A number of the Paris attackers used two apartments and a house in Belgium as possible safe houses in the weeks in leading up to their coordinated shooting and suicide bomb assault on the French capital, investigators said on Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors said in a statement, summarizing some of their findings, that the Paris attack plotters had rented an apartment in Brussels and another in the city of Charleroi at the start of September.

They had also rented a house in the town of Auvelais, some 35 miles south of Brussels, at the start of October. All three were rented for a year, and paid in cash. The tenants gave false identities.

Investigators found DNA traces of one of the attackers, Bilal Hadfi, who blew himself up in Paris on Nov. 13, the prosecutors said.

In the Charleroi apartment they found mattresses and fingerprints of both Hadfi and Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian who had fought in Syria and was believed to be one of the plot leaders. He was killed after a siege in St Denis, near Paris, on Nov. 18.

The house in Auvelais contained several mattresses.

Investigators have also established that the Seat Leon hatchback used in the Paris attacks stopped near the suspected safe houses in Charleroi and Auvelais. Another vehicle, a BMW rented by a suspect, stopped near all three locations.

Prosecutors said last week that they had found a possible Paris attacks bomb factory in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek, with traces of explosives and handmade belts.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Islamic State claims suicide attack on Pakistani consulate in Afghan city

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on the Pakistani consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, stoking fears over the spread of the ultra-radical movement in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials said all three attackers and at least seven members of the security forces died during the attack by the Islamic States, which hitherto had not struck high-profile Pakistani targets in Afghanistan.

The attack, which coincided with efforts to restart the stalled peace process with Taliban insurgents and ease diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan, added a dangerous new element to Afghanistan’s volatile security mix.

“This is a major concern for us if they carry out more attacks like this,” an Afghan security official said. “We have enough problems to deal with already.”

Nangarhar, the province in which Jalalabad is located, has become the main Afghan stronghold of Islamic State (IS), which has battled the Taliban for leadership of the Islamist insurgency, attracting many former Taliban militants.

But IS has not so far been regarded as ready to organize and mount a complex attack involving suicide bombers and gunmen hitting a major urban target, said the security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said a suicide bomber had tried to join a queue of people seeking visas to Pakistan and blew himself up after being prevented from entering the building.

Witnesses in Jalalabad, the main trade gateway to the Khyber Pass and Pakistan, said heavy gunfire and a series of explosions could be heard during a battle that lasted several hours, and residents and children from a nearby school were evacuated.

Islamic State said on its official Telegram messaging service channel that three members wearing suicide-bomb vests carried out the attack, which it said had killed dozens of people including “several Pakistani intelligence officers”.

It said two suicide attackers had been killed while a third escaped.

Pakistan condemned the attack but said all members of the consulate staff were safe, with one official slightly injured by broken glass.

The attack carried echoes of one last week on the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, when a group of assailants barricaded themselves in a house and resisted security forces for about 24 hours after a suicide bombing.

Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met this week to try to resurrect efforts to end nearly 15 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan, even as fighting with the Taliban intensifies.

In Pakistan on Wednesday, at least 14 people were killed in am explosion near a polio vaccination center in the southwestern city of Quetta.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Sultan and Mirwais Harooni and Andrew MacAskill in Kabul, Tommy Wilkes in Islamabad and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Editing by Robert Birsel and Miral Fahmy)

Syrian bomber suspected as blast kills 10 in Istanbul tourist hub

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A suicide bomber thought to have crossed recently from Syria killed at least 10 people, most of them German tourists, in Istanbul’s historic heart on Tuesday, in an attack Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed on Islamic State.

All of those killed in Sultanahmet square, near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia – major tourist sites in the center of one of the world’s most visited cities – were foreigners, Davutoglu said. A senior Turkish official said nine were German, while Peru’s foreign ministry said a Peruvian man also died.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the bomber was believed to have recently entered Turkey from Syria but was not on Turkey’s watch list of suspected militants. He said earlier that the bomber had been identified from body parts at the scene and was thought to be a Syrian born in 1988.

Davutoglu said he had spoken by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to offer condolences and vowed Turkey’s fight against Islamic State, at home and as part of the U.S.-led coalition, would continue.

“Until we wipe out Daesh, Turkey will continue its fight at home and with coalition forces,” he said in comments broadcast live on television, using an Arabic name for Islamic State. He vowed to hunt down and punish those linked to the bomber.

Merkel similarly vowed no respite in the fight against international terrorism, telling a news conference in Berlin: “The terrorists are the enemies of all free people … of all humanity, be it in Syria, Turkey, France or Germany.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamist, leftist and Kurdish militants, who are battling Ankara in southeast Turkey, have all carried out attacks in the past.

Several bodies lay on the ground in the square, also known as the Hippodrome of Constantinople, in the immediate aftermath of the blast. It was not densely packed at the time of the explosion, according to a police officer working there, but small groups of tourists had been wandering around.

“This incident has once again shown that as a nation we should act as one heart, one body in the fight against terror. Turkey’s determined and principled stance in the fight against terrorism will continue to the end,” President Tayyip Erdogan told a lunch for Turkish ambassadors in Ankara.

Norway’s foreign ministry said one Norwegian man was injured and was being treated in hospital.

The White House condemned the “heinous attack” and pledged solidarity with NATO ally Turkey against terrorism. U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon said he hoped those responsible for “this despicable crime” were swiftly brought to justice.

Turkey, a candidate for accession to the European Union, is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State fighters who have seized territory in neighboring Syria and Iraq, some of it directly abutting Turkey.

“UNIMAGINABLE” SCENE

The dull thud of Tuesday’s blast was heard in districts of Istanbul several kilometers away, residents said. Television footage showed a police car which appeared to have been overturned by the force of the blast.

“We heard a loud sound and I looked at the sky to see if it was raining because I thought it was thunder but the sky was clear,” said Kuwaiti tourist Farah Zamani, 24, who was shopping at one of the covered bazaars with her father and sister.

Tourist sites including the Hagia Sophia and nearby Basilica Cistern were closed on the governor’s orders, officials said.

“They attacked Sultanahmet to grab attention because this is what the world thinks of when it thinks of Turkey,” said Kursat Yilmaz, who has operated tours for 25 years from an office by the square.

“We’re not surprised this happened here, this has always been a possible target,” he said.

Ambulances ferried away the wounded as police cordoned off streets. The sound of the call to prayer rang out from the Blue Mosque as forensic police officers worked at the scene.

“It was unimaginable,” the police officer who had been working on the square said, describing an amateur video he had seen of the immediate aftermath, with six or seven bodies lying on the ground and other people seriously wounded.

Just over a year ago, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station for tourists off the same square, killing one officer. That attack was initially claimed by a far-left group, the DHKP-C, but officials later said it had been carried out by a woman with suspected Islamist militant links.

TURKEY A TARGET

Turkey has become a target for Islamic State, with two bombings last year blamed on the radical Sunni Muslim group, in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100 people.

Violence has also escalated in the mainly Kurdish southeast since a two-year ceasefire collapsed in July between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been fighting for three decades for Kurdish autonomy.

The PKK has however generally avoided attacking civilian targets in urban centers outside the southeast in recent years.

Turkey also sees a threat from the PYD and YPG, Kurdish groups in Syria which are fighting Islamic State with U.S. backing, but which Ankara says have close links to the PKK.

“For us, there is no difference between the PKK, PYD, YPG, DHKP-C … or whatever their abbreviation may be. One terrorist organization is no different than the other,” Erdogan said, vowing that Turkey’s military campaign against Kurdish militants in the southeast would continue.

Davutoglu’s office imposed a broadcasting ban on the blast, invoking a law which allows for such steps when there is the potential for serious harm to national security or public order.

The attack raised fears of further damage to Turkey’s vital tourism industry, already hit by a diplomatic row with Moscow which has seen Russian tour operators cancel trips.

But Yilmaz, the tour operator, said he had sold a package to a tourist from Colombia just an hour after the blast.

“The reality is the world has grown accustomed to terrorism. It’s unfortunate, and I wish it weren’t true, but terrorism now happens everywhere,” he said.

“The agenda changes quickly in this age. If tourism is affected by this, it will be temporary. These things pass, but the Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet mosque are eternal.”

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk, Daren Butler and Melih Aslan in Istanbul, Madeline Chambers in Berlin and Joachim Dagenborg in Oslo; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Stamp and Gareth Jones)