Tag Archives: Terrorism

Islamic State presses attack to capture more land in eastern Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State captured ground from Syrian government forces near the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Monday, a group monitoring the war said, pressing a three-day assault which state media says has killed 300 people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was still no word on the fate of over 400 people it reported kidnapped when IS began to attack government-held areas of the city on Saturday. State media has made no mention of the abductions.

Deir al-Zor is the main city in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Islamic State, in control of most of Deir al-Zor province, has laid siege since March to remaining government-held areas in the city of Deir al-Zor.

This is the third day of IS attacks on the towns of Ayyash and Begayliya, which lie to the northwest of Deir al-Zor city on the approach from Raqqa.

IS has now taken control of areas in the south and west of Begayliya, and has seized the Saeqa military camp near the town of Ayyash, the Observatory said.

A Syrian official source told Reuters the Syrian army repelled the attacks but IS is continuing the offensive.

Speaking to Al Mayadeen television news early on Monday, Deir al-Zor’s governor said the security situation in Begayliya was “excellent”.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said on Sunday that at least 300 people, including women and children, had been killed during the attacks in Deir al-Zor.

The Observatory says around 400 people said to have been kidnapped have been taken to countryside to the west of the city, closer to Raqqa.

The United Nations has warned that around 200,000 besieged residents in Deir al-Zor face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

The Syrian government has dropped some basic commodities into the city in recent weeks, and Russia said on Friday it had dropped 22 tonnes of aid to the besieged part of the city.

The Syrian foreign ministry said on Monday it had written to the United Nations condemning the attack. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, also condemned the attacks by IS in a statement on Monday.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

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)

Desertions deplete Afghan forces, adding to security worries

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan/KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan Lieutenant Amanullah said he was ready to fight to the death to stop the Taliban making gains across the south of the country, where insurgents have already overrun a series of districts in their traditional heartland.

In November, 15 months after joining up, he deserted, one of thousands of tired and frustrated soldiers who have shed their uniforms, seriously blunting the Afghan army’s power to repel a growing militant threat.

For Amanullah, everything changed late last year when, fighting on an empty stomach and without being paid for months, militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns attacked his base from all directions in a three-day battle.

The final straw came when requests for reinforcements at the remote outpost went unanswered and colleagues bled to death around him because of a lack of medical care.

When the ambush ended, he joined three friends shedding their uniforms and walking away from the base near Kandahar, an area that has long been a Taliban stronghold.

“I joined the army so that I could support my family and serve my country, but this is a suicide mission,” said Amanullah, 28, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.

The attrition rate hits at the heart of the U.S. exit strategy in Afghanistan, which is to build a force capable of taking on the Taliban when it fully withdraws.

NATO ended its combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, and a smaller force remains mainly training and advising Afghans. Alarmed by Taliban gains, the United States decided last year to slow the pace of withdrawing troops still there.

In 2015, the Afghan army had to replace about a third of its roughly 170,000 soldiers because of desertions, casualties and low re-enlistment rates, according to figures released by the U.S. military last month. That means a third of the army consists of first-year recruits fresh off a three-month training course.

HEAVY CASUALTIES

The turnover rate is one of the most serious problems faced by Afghan security forces, according to Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“These high turnover issues increase the possibility that when U.S.-led forces leave Afghanistan for good, whenever that is, they will be leaving Afghan forces unable to fend off a still-ferocious insurgency,” he said.

The United States has spent around $65 billion preparing fledgling Afghan security forces, intended to number about 350,000 personnel, for when it leaves.U.S. General John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told Congress in October high attrition rates are because of poor leadership and soldiers rarely getting holiday.

In some areas, soldiers “have probably been in a consistent fight for three years,” he said.

When the Afghan army in 2015 took over almost all combat operations for the first time since the Taliban were ousted, casualties rose 26 percent, according a NATO military officer. About 15,800 soldiers were wounded or killed, or almost one in 10, according to the officer, who asked not to be named.

Despite the challenges, the overall size of the Afghan army remains stable. Afghans willing to risk their lives for a basic monthly salary of about $300 a month equal those walking away.

RECRUITMENT DRIVE

The army has been running adverts on prime-time television that show inspiring images of resolute soldiers on training exercises, eating in well-stocked mess halls and with good kit.But on the frontlines, army and police deserters complain of commanders having no answer for deadly ambushes, no broader strategy for prevailing in the war, corruption among their leaders and poor food and equipment.

“Barely a day passed without gunfire, ambushes, roadside bombs,” said Farooq, a police officer from Helmand province, who quit his job three months ago. “We were treated as if we had no value and our job was to get killed.”

Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for the interior ministry, said the government was working to improve conditions for security forces and praised their work under difficult circumstances.

“We are very happy with the commitment of the police and soldiers,” he said.

Since quitting his job, Amanullah said he has been struggling to find work in a nation with one of the lowest labor participation rates in the world. He has decided to reapply for the army.

“I am hoping to work in a safer region and under better commanders,” he said. “I am just waiting for their response.”

(Editing by Mike Collett-White)

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)

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)

Europe turns to Morocco in Paris attacks investigation

AIT OURIR, Morocco (Reuters) – A few weeks before she was killed in a raid by French special forces beside the suspected ringleader of last November’s Paris attacks, Hasna Ait Boulahcen packed her bags and said her last farewells to relatives in Morocco.

The 26-year-old Parisian’s almost two-month-long trip to her father’s home town of Ait Ourir proved to be one of the last stops on her journey from fun-loving party girl to devout Muslim – and possibly Islamist militant.

Conversations with relatives and family friends shed light not only on her transformation but also on the role of Moroccan intelligence in helping services in France and Belgium trying to counter the threats of Islamist militant attacks.

Ait Boulahcen’s stay in Ait Ourir from early August until late September is now part of the investigation into the attacks which killed 130 people and were claimed by Islamic State, and has increasingly drawn in Morocco’s intelligence services.

On Nov. 18, five days after the Paris attacks, she and her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud were killed in a barrage of bullets when special services opened fire on the apartment she had led him to in the French capital, possibly as a hideout.

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.

A week after the attacks, French President Francois Hollande received King Mohammed of Morocco in Paris to thank him for Rabat’s “efficient help”.

On Nov. 23, after it became clear some of the attackers had planned the attacks from Brussels and were of Moroccan origin, Rabat said Belgium’s King Philippe had also called King Mohammed to enlist the help of the North African country’s intelligence.

“We are exchanging information with them on a very professional and very good level,” said Alain Winants, who was head of Belgium’s intelligence service from 2006 to 2014 and is now Advocate General at Belgium’s Supreme Court.

Security has been tightened in Ait Ourir, a dusty potato-growing town in central Morocco where Ait Boulahcen’s father Mohammad has a modest concrete home. Relatives and neighbors told Reuters they had been questioned by police, who kept a close watch on the town from cars parked on many street corners.

The Moroccan authorities have not said what their inquiries have thrown up but a relative in Ait Ourir told Reuters that Ait Boulahcen was accompanied by one of her brothers when she arrived in early August and the other brother joined them later.

She was stopped at the airport when she flew in, one of her uncles said, but was allowed to enter the country when her father and an uncle gave the authorities their addresses.

It was not clear why she was stopped or whether she was on any security watch list. Police did not comment.

BIG CHANGE

Ait Boulahcen, her brothers and a sister were born in France to their father’s second Moroccan wife after his first marriage, which produced two daughters and a son, broke down. He returned to Morocco from France when his second marriage also collapsed.

Relatives and neighbors saw a huge change in Ait Boulahcen this summer. She had ditched the modern clothes she wore during her first visit to see her father in 2013 and now had on the full face veil favored by more conservative Muslim women.

“We had problems with her when she came the first time because she used to smoke and drink, and in our town it is shameful for a girl to act like that. She was so happy when she said she’d changed and was a good Muslim now,” an uncle said.

“She said she wanted to come back and get Moroccan identity papers and a passport,” he said, without making clear how far she had got.

He and other family members said they believed Abaaoud had exploited his cousin’s naiveté and led her astray. How close they were is unclear but Ait Boulahcen’s half-sister, Nezha, said they had not discussed Abaaoud during her stay.

Aitboulahcen unwittingly led police to Abaaoud by speaking to him on her mobile phone, which was tapped as part of a drugs investigation. Police then saw her meet Abaaoud and lead him to the apartment where they and a third suspect were killed.

French police located Abaaoud after they received a tip-off from Morocco that he may still be in France and honed in on Aitboulahcen. Until then they thought he had fled the country.

It is not clear why Abaaoud’s younger brother Yassine has been held since landing in Morocco in October. Their father, Omar Abaaoud, declined comment.

LONG HISTORY OF COOPERATION

European intelligence has cooperated with Rabat since guest workers from Morocco began arriving in the 1960s because monitoring them was impossible without knowledge of their culture and languages, Moroccan Darija and Amazigh, experts say.

Morocco has stepped up its tracking of militant cells since Islamist attackers killed 17 people in Marrakesh in 2011.

“Morocco has shown itself to be extremely reactive in passing on crucial information that has prevented terrorist attacks and whose value has been appreciated by countries targeted, ranging from France to Spain and the United States,” said Moroccan scholar El Mostafa Rezrazi, author of a book on security cooperation between Morocco and Europe.

A Moroccan security source said the foreign intelligence service DGED (Direction générale des études et de la documentation) has “operations” in Belgium but did not confirm estimates by experts that it has about 150 “contacts” there.

Cooperation almost broke down in 2008 when Belgium asked the DGED to pull out three officers who had not kept it informed about their actions, and Rabat pulled out all of its agents.

“That didn’t last long because, with 600,000 Moroccans in Belgium, neither the Moroccan service nor the Belgian service could stay in a situation where there was no contact,” said Winants, the former Belgian intelligence chief. “I went very rapidly to see my counterparts in Morocco and we started again on a new basis.”

CRITICISM BY RIGHTS GROUPS

Cooperation between France and Morocco also dates back many years although relations were strained in 2014 when French authorities sought to question Abdellatif Hammouchi, the head of Morocco’s domestic intelligence, over torture allegations.

This led to Morocco suspending cooperation agreements with France, despite concerns in Paris that Moroccans and French of Moroccan origin were heading to Syria to train as jihadists.

The two countries resumed cooperation in January 2015, after Islamist gunmen killed 12 people in an attack on the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

Moroccan officials estimate that 2,000 Moroccan fighters have joined armed groups in Syria and Iraq, including Islamic State and the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, and about 200 have been jailed on their return home.

But Morocco’s experience of battling militancy dates back at least to the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan war, when hundreds of Moroccans went to Afghanistan to fight Soviet forces.

A number of militants from Morocco or of Moroccan origin were arrested over the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and were linked to other attacks such as suicide bombings that killed 33 people and 12 attackers in Casablanca in 2003 and the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.

The DGST domestic intelligence (Direction générale de la surveillance du territoire) has been accused by Moroccan and international human rights organizations of torturing suspects, including on behalf of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency during President George W. Bush’s “war on terror”.

Morocco has denied the charges.

(Philip Blenkinsop reported from Brussels, Additional reporting by Morade Azzouz, Marie-Louise Gumuchian and John Irish in Paris, and by Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam, Writing by Patrick Markey and Timothy Heritage, Editing by 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)