Tag Archives: Terrorism

Samples confirm Islamic State used mustard gas in Iraq, diplomat says

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a diplomat said, based on tests by the global chemical weapons watchdog.

A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that laboratory tests had come back positive for the sulfur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.

The OPCW will not identify who used the chemical agent. But the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the findings have not yet been released, said the result confirmed that chemical weapons had been used by Islamic State fighters.

The samples were taken after the soldiers became ill during fighting against Islamic State militants southwest of Erbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

The OPCW already concluded in October that mustard gas was used last year in neighboring Syria. Islamic State has declared a “caliphate” in territory it controls in both Iraq and Syria and does not recognize the frontier.

Experts believe that the sulfur mustard either originated from an undeclared Syrian chemical stockpile, or that militants have gained the basic know how to develop and conduct a crude chemical attack with rockets or mortars.

Iraq’s chemical arsenal was mainly destroyed in the Saddam era, although U.S. troops encountered some old Saddam-era chemical munitions during the 2003-2011 U.S. occupation.

Syria gave up its own chemical weapons, including stockpiles of sulfur mustard, under international supervision after hundreds of civilians were killed with sarin nerve gas in a Damascus suburb in 2013, an attack Western countries blame on President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which denies it.

Sulfur mustard is a Class 1 chemical agent, which means it has very few uses outside chemical warfare. Used with lethal effectiveness in World War One, it causes severe delayed burns to the eyes, skin and respiratory tract.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Peter Graff)

Pakistani university reopens after Taliban attack, teachers allowed guns

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – The university in northwest Pakistan where Taliban gunmen killed at least 20 people last month reopened for classes on Monday with teachers – but not students – allowed to carry weapons.

Pakistani Taliban militants have threatened more assaults on schools and universities since the Jan. 20 attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, fueling a growing sense of insecurity in the country.

The attack had reminded Pakistanis of the horrors that took place a little over a year earlier, when militants massacred 134 pupils at an army school just 19 miles away, in Peshawar, the main city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Before Monday’s reopening the university took extra security measures, installing new CCTV cameras, hiring more armed guards, and raising the height of boundary walls, vice chancellor Fazal Rahim Marwat told Reuters.

The university also decided that teachers could continue to carry their own licensed weapons as long as they do not display them in classrooms, Marwat said.

A chemistry professor who was killed during last month’s assault had been lauded as a hero for firing back at the attackers. But Marwat said the school decided to reject a request from some teachers to issue them firearms.

“After taking whatever security measures were possible for protection of students and faculty members, we opened the university today for classes‎,” Marwat said.

Students who owned weapons had to submit them at the entrance of the campus, he said.

Firearms are easily available in northwest Pakistan, and gun ownership is ingrained in the culture of Pashtun tribes of the region.

Many of the returning students arrived at the campus with their parents and relatives, who waited while they went to classes. Several, however, were still too traumatized to attend school or were made to stay home by scared parents.

“I know the university has been opened today, but my parents didn’t allow me to go today,” said student Ihsanullah Khan. “I am not afraid and will definitely join my friends very soon.”

Vice chancellor Marwat said the university had arranged counseling sessions for students and for recreational trips elsewhere in the country.

The Pakistani army said the attack on the university was masterminded by Umar Mansoor, a Pakistani Taliban militant based in Afghanistan, who was also blamed for the Peshawar school massacre.

The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

On Monday, an IED blast in Pakistan’s volatile South Waziristan region on the border with Afghanistan left one paramilitary soldier dead and three injured.

(Reporting by Jibran Ahmad and Hafiz Wazir; Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

U.S. tells allies campaign to defeat Islamic State must be accelerated

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States pressed allies on Thursday to contribute more to a U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State that it says must be accelerated, regardless of the fate of diplomatic efforts to end Syria’s civil war.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter started talks on Thursday in Brussels with more than two dozen defense ministers, including from key ally Saudi Arabia, which renewed its offer potentially to send troops into Syria.

Carter’s push came a day after France delivered a rebuke to President Barack Obama, demanding that Washington show a clearer commitment to resolving the crisis in Syria where Russia is tipping the military balance in favor of President al-Bashar Assad.

The talks take place as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leads a diplomatic push in Munich to rescue imperiled peace efforts, which are being held despite Russian bombing raids to bolster Syrian forces around the city of Aleppo.

Carter sought to draw a line between military and diplomatic efforts. “Our focus here is going to be on counter-ISIL and that campaign will go on because ISIL must be defeated, will be defeated, whatever happens with the Syrian civil war,” Carter told reporters, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“But it certainly would help to de-fuel extremism if the Syrian civil war came to an end.”

The United States hopes the face-to-face gathering of coalition defense ministers will allow it to secure more support for a military campaign that aims to recapture the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

WARPLANES, TRAINING, SURVEILLANCE

Carter plans to offer a long list of required military capabilities — which, beyond air power, include training Iraqi forces and help with intelligence and surveillance. Carter said countries that cannot contribute militarily can help in other ways, like by choking Islamic State financing.

“We’ll all look back after victory and remember who participated in the fight,” Carter said, addressing the coalition defense ministers, adding the campaign would move more swiftly “if all of the nations in this room do even more”.

He also predicted “tangible gains” on the ground in the coming weeks, vague terminology that could mean anything from territorial advances to strikes against militant leaders or infrastructure.

Saudi Arabia’s Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, a military spokesman, said his country was ready to send troops into Syria if there was a consensus in the coalition. But he declined to elaborate, saying: “It is too early to talk about such options.”

“Today we are talking at the strategic level,” Asseri told reporters in Brussels.

Carter and U.S. defense officials also sought to manage expectations about the talks, since many ministers will not be able to make new commitments without first winning support from their parliaments. The timeline for the campaign to retake Raqqa and Mosul is also unclear.

The head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cautioned this week that Iraqi forces were unlikely to recapture Mosul this year, despite hopes by Baghdad.

Carter only said securing Raqqa and Mosul needed to happen “as soon as possible”. He also acknowledged the need to grapple with Islamic State’s spread beyond Syria and Iraq, particularly in Libya.

WASHINGTON FACES SCEPTICISM

Even if there is consensus on the military plan to fight Islamic State on Thursday, it is unlikely to diminish scepticism about broader U.S. policy in Syria, which has sought to limit America’s role in the civil war.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Wednesday questioned the commitment of the United States to resolving the Syrian war. Rebel groups say that while Washington has put pressure on them to attend peace talks, they see less help on the battlefield.

NATO ally Turkey has meanwhile, upbraided the United States for supporting Syrian Kurdish PYD rebels, saying Washington’s inability to understand the group’s true nature had turned the region into a “sea of blood”.

Eager to sidestep such friction, NATO allies have focused on grappling with the humanitarian fallout from Syria’s conflict at talks over the past two days.

NATO announced on Thursday it will seek to help slow refugee flows through the Aegean Sea with a maritime mission to target criminal people smuggling networks.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Robin Emmott, additional reporting by Sabine Seibold, editing by Peter Millership)

Female suicide bombers kill more than 60 people in Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Two female suicide bombers killed more than 60 people at a camp for people displaced by an insurgency of the jihadist Boko Haram group in the northeast Nigerian town of Dikwa, military and emergency officials said on Wednesday.

The attack occurred 50 miles outside the capital of Borno state, centre of the seven-year insurgency, they said. It took place on Tuesday, but a breakdown in the telephone system prevented the incident being made public earlier.

The two female suicide bombers sneaked into an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp and detonated themselves in the middle of it, emergency officials and the military source said.

The chairman of the State Emergency Management Agency, Satomi Ahmad, added that 78 people were injured.

No group claimed responsibility but the attack bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which has frequently used female bombers and even children to hit targets.

The militant group has recently increased the frequency and deadliness of attacks with three at the end of January. At least 65 people were killed outside Borno state capital Maiduguri on Jan. 31.

Since it lost territory to a government counter-offensive last year, Boko Haram has reverted to hit-and-run attacks on villages and suicide bombings at places of worship or markets.

Boko Haram has only rarely targeted camps housing people displaced by the conflict and Tuesday’s attack was the first one to kill victims in Borno state.

The military said militants made one abortive attempt on a camp on the outskirts of Maiduguri on Jan. 31. Boko Haram hit a Nigerian IDP camp for the first time last September, in the Adamawa state capital of Yola.

(Reporting by Lanre Ola; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Turkey president chastises U.S. over support for Syrian Kurds

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan upbraided the United States for its support of Syrian Kurdish rebels on Wednesday, saying Washington’s inability to grasp their true nature had turned the region into a “sea of blood”.

Turkey should respond by implementing its own solution, he said, alluding to the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria – something Ankara has long wanted but a proposal that has failed to resonate with the United States and other NATO allies.

His comments, a day after Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador over its support for Syrian Kurds, displayed Ankara’s growing frustration with Washington, which backs Syrian Kurdish rebels against Islamic State militants in Syria’s civil war.

Compounding tensions, the army said that one Turkish soldier had been killed and another wounded when security forces clashed with Kurdish militants crossing over from Syria.

Ankara regards the Syrian Kurdish PYD group as terrorists, citing their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-old insurgency for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

“Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organization?” Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara to provincial officials, addressing the United States.

He added that a U.S. failure to understand the essence of the PYD and PKK had caused a “sea of blood” and created a domestic security issue for Turkey.

“On the Syrian problem, which has become a part of our own domestic security, the time has come to implement our proposals for a solution, which everyone finds to be rational and right,” Erdogan said.

Turkey has repeatedly called for a “safe zone” or “no-fly zone” inside Syria. While some Western allies have voiced support in principle, the idea has gained no traction abroad because of concerns that it could bring the West into direct confrontation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Ankara summoned the U.S. ambassador to drive home its displeasure after State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the United States did not regard the PYD as a terrorist organization.

Another attempt at Syria peace talks last month quickly succumbed to mounting advances against rebels by Assad’s forces backed by Russian air strikes, amid international disunity over how to end the war with global and regional powers supporting opposing sides.

REFUGEE INFLUX

As well as battling both a Kurdish insurgency and Islamic State, which has carried out several deadly bombings in Turkey, Ankara has been grappling with an influx of more than 2.5 million refugees since the 2011 start of Syria’s conflict.

Erdogan said that Turkish spending on food, accommodation and medical care for 280,000 Syrian refugees living in camps had reached $10 billion, while the United Nations had provided just $455 million.

On Tuesday evening, Turkish soldiers spotted seven PKK militants entering Sirnak province’s Cizre district from Syria and, during an ensuing clash, one soldier was killed and one wounded, the armed forces said in a statement.

The area of Syria near where the battle occurred is controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

In a separate incident, a police officer was killed and another wounded when PKK rebels fired rockets at an armored vehicle in the town of Sirnak, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. It was not clear when that attack occurred.

Military sources said the army also seized up to 33 pounds of explosives and four suicide-bomber vests when it detained 34 people trying to cross into Turkey from a swathe of Syria under Islamic State control.

Turkey fears that advances by Syrian Kurds against Islamic State close to its 560-mile border with Syria will fuel separatist ambitions among its own Kurds.

A ceasefire between the PKK and the government collapsed in July following what the government said were attacks on security forces, plunging southeast Turkey into its worst violence since the 1990s and scuppering peace talks.

The PYD and PKK share not only ideology but fighters, with the PKK drawing Syrian Kurdish fighters to its camps in northern Iraq and Turkish Kurds serving in PYD ranks.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackley and Asli Kandemir in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan and Daren Butler; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

FBI director says investigators unable to unlock San Bernardino shooter’s phone content

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – FBI Director James Comey said on Tuesday that federal investigators have still been unable to access the contents of a cellphone belonging to one of the killers in the Dec. 2 shootings in San Bernardino, California, due to encryption technology.

Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the phenomenon of communications “going dark” due to more sophisticated technology and wider use of encryption is “overwhelmingly affecting” law enforcement operations, including investigations into murder, car accidents, drug trafficking and the proliferation of child pornography.

“We still have one of those killer’s phones that we have not been able to open,” Comey said in reference to the San Bernardino attack.

Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, launched the Islamic State-inspired attack with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, at a social services agency in the California city, leaving 14 dead.

Comey and other federal officials have long warned that powerful encryption poses a challenge for criminal and national security investigators, though the FBI director added Tuesday that “overwhelmingly this is a problem that local law enforcement sees.”

Technology experts and privacy advocates counter that so-called “back door” access provided to authorities would expose data to malicious actors and undermine the overall security of the Internet.

A study from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard released last month citing some current and former intelligence officials concluded that fears about encryption are overstated in part because new technologies have given investigators unprecedented means to track suspects.

Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to provide a declassified response to the Berkman study within 60 days. Clapper agreed to the request.

The White House last year abandoned a push for legislation that would mandate U.S. technology firms to allow investigators a way to overcome encryption protections, amid rigorous private sector opposition. But the issue has found renewed life after the shootings in San Bernardino and Paris.

Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the intelligence panel, have said they would like to pursue encryption legislation, though neither has introduced a bill yet.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz and Mark Hosenball; editing by Sandra Maler and G Crosse)

U.S. intelligence chief warns of cyber, ‘homegrown’ security threats

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Attacks by “homegrown” Islamist extremists are among the most imminent security threats facing the United States in 2016, along with dangers posed overseas by Islamic State and cyber security concerns, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday.

In his annual assessment of threats to the United States, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that fast-moving cyber and technological advances “could lead to widespread vulnerabilities in civilian infrastructures and U.S. government systems.”

In prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, Clapper outlined an array of other threats from Russia and North Korean nuclear ambitions to instability caused by the Syrian migrant crisis.

“In my 50 plus years in the intelligence business I cannot recall a more diverse array of crises and challenges than we face today,” Clapper said.

Islamic State poses the biggest danger among militant groups because of the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria, and is determined to launch attacks on U.S. soil, Clapper said. It also has demonstrated “unprecedented online proficiencies,” he said.

While the United States “will almost certainly remain at least a rhetorically important enemy” for many foreign militant groups, “homegrown violent extremists … will probably continue to pose the most significant Sunni terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland in 2016,” he said, referring to Sunni Muslim jihadists.

“The perceived success” of attacks by such extremists in Europe and San Bernardino, California, “might motivate others to replicate opportunistic attacks with little or no warning,” Clapper said.

A married couple inspired by Islamist militants shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December.

General Vincent Stewart, director of Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Islamic State aims to conduct more attacks in Europe during 2016 and has ambitions to attack inside the United States.

The group is taking advantage of the refugee flow from Syria’s civil war to hide militants among them and is adept at obtaining false documentation, Clapper said.

Al Qaeda affiliates, most notably the one in Yemen known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, have proven resilient and are positioned to make gains this year despite pressure from Western counterterrorism operations, Clapper said.

He cited threats from Russia’s increasingly assertive international policies, saying “We could be into another Cold War-like spiral.”

U.S. intelligence assesses that North Korea, which launched a satellite into orbit last weekend, is committed to developing a long-range nuclear armed missile that can reach the United States and has carried out some steps towards fielding a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile system, Clapper said.

He said North Korea has followed through on publicly stated plans to re-start a plutonium production reactor and could begin to assemble a plutonium stockpile within months.

CIA director John Brennan said one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s objectives in conducting nuclear and missile tests is to advance efforts by North Korea to “market” such technology, presumably to other rogue regimes around the world.

(Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Alistair Bell)

U.S. looks to shore up allies’ support to battle Islamic State

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States said on Tuesday it hoped allies demonstrate a willingness to ramp up their contributions to the fight against Islamic State and to deterring Russia in eastern Europe during high-level defense talks in Brussels this week.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he plans to outline America’s plan to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State to defense chiefs from more than two dozen allies at talks on Thursday.

The United States has long-standing concerns that many allies are not contributing nearly enough to combat the jihadist group that has spread beyond its self-declared caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.

“I don’t think anybody’s satisfied with the pace of the (campaign), that’s why we’re all looking to accelerate it. Certainly the president isn’t (satisfied),” Carter told reporters traveling with him.

Washington has signaled the need for military and police trainers as well as contributions of special operations forces, including from Sunni Muslim Arab allies now expressing a new willingness to contribute.

“We have a very clear operational picture of how to do it. Now we just need the resources and the forces to fall in behind it,” he said, noting plans to capture Islamic State strongholds of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

A top U.S. intelligence official told Congress on Tuesday that an Iraqi-led operation to retake Mosul is unlikely to take place this year.

The U.S. strategy in Syria is likely to come under intense scrutiny after four months of Russian air strikes have tipped momentum toward President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s five-year-old civil war.

Defense chiefs were expected to discuss a major Syrian government offensive backed by Russia and Iran now underway near Aleppo that rebels say threatens the future of their insurrection.

DETERRING RUSSIA

On Wednesday, NATO defense ministers will begin outlining plans for a complex web of small eastern outposts, forces on rotation, regular war games and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force.

U.S. plans for a four-fold increase in military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in fiscal year 2017 are central to the strategy, which has been shaped in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

“I’ll be looking for others in NATO to echo (us) in our investment,” Carter said.

Carter said the plan aimed to move NATO to a “full deterrence posture” to thwart any kind of aggression.

“It’s not going to look like it did back in Cold War days but it will constitute, in today’s terms, a strong deterrent,” Carter said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alistair Bell)

U.S. military seeks to prepare Africa for shifting terror threat

THIES, Senegal (Reuters) – African forces began a U.S.-led counter-terrorism training program in Senegal on Monday amid what a U.S. commander said were rising signs of collaboration between Islamist militant groups across north Africa and the Sahel.

The annual “Flintlock” exercises started only weeks after an attack in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou left 30 people dead. The assault on a hotel used by foreigners raised concerns that militants were expanding from a stronghold in north Mali toward stable, Western allies like Senegal.

Al Qaeda (AQIM) fighters claimed responsibility for the attack, one of increasingly bold regional strikes in the Sahel, a poor, arid zone between the Sahara Desert and Sudanian Savanna that is home to a number of roving militant groups.

U.S. Commander for Special Operations Command Africa Brigadier General Donald Bolduc told reporters on Monday that increased collaboration between militant groups meant they have been able to strengthen and strike harder in the region.

“We have watched that collaboration manifest itself with ISIS becoming more effective in north Africa, Boko Haram becoming more deadly in the Lake Chad Basin (and) AQIM adopting asymmetrical attacks … against urban infrastructure,” he said. ISIS, or ISIL, is used for the militant group Islamic State.

Bolduc said that cooperation had increased as Islamic State exploited a power vacuum in Libya to expand its self-declared caliphate, which takes up large areas in Syria and Iraq.

“We know in Libya that they (AQIM and ISIS) are working more closely together. It’s more than just influence, they (AQIM) are really taking direction from them,” he said.

Not all security experts agree that there are emerging alliances between Islamist militant groups. Some argue that competition between groups has led to more attacks.

This year’s program, which opened on a dusty airstrip in Senegal’s central city of Thies, involves around 1,700 mostly African special operation forces. Western partners including France and Germany are among more than 30 countries participating.

Nathan Broshear, spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, said the exercises were called Flintlock, after a type of firearm, to symbolize readiness for any threat.

Bolduc stressed the importance of regional cooperation and intelligence-sharing and said the United States would help Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon set up a joint intelligence center by the middle of next year.

The United States already supports a regional task force against the Nigeria-based group Boko Haram.

The Ouagadougou attack and a hotel attack in Mali’s capital in November led to a greater emphasis on preparing for urban attacks this year through training to increase cooperation between military forces and police.

At the request of African partners, the exercises will also include anti-Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) training.

The program, an annual event since 2005, will run from February 8 through 29. Some exercises will also be held in Mauritania.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

U.S. defense intelligence chief predicts increased Islamic State attacks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State is likely to “increase the pace and lethality” of its transnational attacks, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart said on Monday.

Speaking to a security conference, Stewart linked his warning to the extremist movement’s establishment of “emerging branches” in Mali, Tunisia, Somalia, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

“And it wouldn’t surprise me to see them further extend” operations from the Sinai Peninsula deeper into Egypt, he said.

“Last year, Daesh remained entrenched on Iraqi and Syrian battlefields and expanded globally to Libya, Sinai, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Caucasus,” Stewart said, using a derisive Arabic acronym for Islamic State. “Daesh is likely to increase the pace and lethality of its transnational attacks.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay. Editing by Warren Strobel and Eric Beech)