Tag Archives: Terrorism

Suicide bomber kills at least 15 outside Pakistan polio center

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, the latest militant attack on the anti-polio campaign in the country.

Two militant groups – the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, which has links with the Taliban and has pledged allegiance to Islamic State – separately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomb blew up a police van that had just arrived at the center to provide an escort for workers in a drive to immunize all children under five years old in the poor southwestern province of Baluchistan.

“It was a suicide blast, we have gathered evidence from the scene,” Ahsan Mehboob, the provincial police chief told Reuters.

“The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio campaign.”

Ahmed Marwat, who identified himself as a commander and spokesman for Jundullah, said his group was responsible.

“We claim the bomb blast on the polio office. In the coming days, we will make more attacks on polio vaccination offices and polio workers,” he said by telephone.

The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility in a statement released by their spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani.

Teams in Pakistan working to immunize children against the virus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers of distributing drugs designed to sterilize children.

The latest attack killed at least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and two civilians, officials said. Twenty-five people were wounded.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic, the World Health Organization says.

The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down last year, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort.

(Reporting by Gul Yousafzai and Syed Raza Hassan; Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Jibran Ahmed in Peshawar; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)

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)

Maryland man indicted for alleged support of al Shabaab

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Maryland man has been indicted on accusations of supporting the Somalia-based Islamic militant group al Shabaab and appearing in videos for the group, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.

Maalik Alim Jones, 31, “was charged with providing material support to al Shabaab and receiving training from the terrorist organization,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin said in a statement released by the department.

Prosecutors said the suspect traveled to Somalia, received military training from al Shabaab, and took up arms as a terrorist fighter with an organization that has declared the United States a target.

“Having allegedly sworn allegiance to al Shabaab, a terrorist organization bent on destroying America, Maalik Jones will now face American justice in a Manhattan federal court,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

A lawyer for Jones was not listed in online court documents.

Jones has appeared with other al Shabaab fighters in at least two videos that were recovered from an al Shabaab fighter, prosecutors said.

In one, he possessed a firearm, and is seen with several al Shabaab fighters who participated in a June 2015 attack on a Kenyan Defense Force base where two Kenyan soldiers were killed, they said in a statement.

The case comes just days after two men from the Middle East who came to the United States as refugees were arrested on federal terrorism charges in California and Texas last week for supporting Islamic militant groups.

There have been more than 75 publicized arrests of U.S. residents who have allegedly become radicalized by Muslim militants since 2014.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Eric Beech, Bernard Orr)

At least 48 killed in attacks in Iraqi capital, eastern town

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Gunmen detonated suicide vests inside a shopping complex in Baghdad on Monday and a car bomb exploded nearby in an attack claimed by Islamic State that killed at least 18 people and wounded 40 others.

Two bombs later went off in the eastern town of Muqdadiya, killing at least 23 people and wounding another 51, security and medical sources said. Another blast in a southeastern Baghdad suburb killed seven more.

Islamic State militants controlling swathes of Iraq’s north and west claimed responsibility for the attacks in Muqdadiya and at the Baghdad mall, which it said had targeted a gathering of “rejectionists”, its derogatory term for Shi’ite Muslims.

The Iraqi government last month claimed victory against the hardline Sunni militants in the western city of Ramadi, and has slowly pushed them back in other areas.

A security official in Anbar province on Monday said ground advances backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes killed about two dozen insurgents and pushed others out of areas near the government-held city of Haditha in Iraq’s northwest.

Monday’s bombings left the biggest death toll in three months. Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan blamed “this terrorist group after they suffered heavy losses by the security forces”, without naming Islamic State.

Seven people, including two policemen, were killed in the car bomb blast near the Jawaher mall in the predominantly Shi’ite district of Baghdad Jadida, police and medical sources said.

Five more people were shot dead by the gunmen storming the mall, and six others were killed when those same assailants detonated their explosive vests, the sources said.

“People started running into the shops to hide, but (the militants) followed them in and opened fire without mercy,” said Hani Fikrat Abdel Hussein, a shop-owner standing amid shattered glass and rubble at the site of the blasts.

Police regained control of the shopping complex, in the east of the city, and a senior security official told state television there were no hostages, rejecting reports that people had been held.

“The security forces are at the scene and managed to recover the wounded. The situation is under control,” Maan added.

CASINO BOMBING

As well as the violence meted out by Islamic State, Iraq is also gripped by a sectarian conflict mostly between Shi’ites and Sunnis that has been exacerbated by the rise of the militant group.

At least seven people were killed when a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a commercial street in a southeastern Baghdad suburb on Monday, police and medical sources said.

The blast in the Sunni district of Nahrawan left more than 15 people wounded, the sources added.

Earlier in the day, three people were killed and eight others wounded when a car bomb claimed by Islamic State went off near a restaurant in Baquba, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, security and medical sources said.

Two bombs later exploded in an area frequented by Shi’ite militia fighters in the town of Muqdadiya, another 10 miles further northeast, security sources said.

At least 23 people were killed and 51 wounded in those blasts. A bomber detonated his suicide vest inside a casino in the town. A car bomb parked outside then went off as medics and civilians gathered at the site of the first blast.

Security officials said they had imposed a curfew for all of Diyala province, where Muqdadiya and Baquba are located.

Parliamentary speaker Salim al-Jabouri, who is from Muqdadiya, said he was in contact with security and political leaders there and warned violence there aimed to “undermine efforts for civil peace”, state TV said in a news flash.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the Baghdad suburb.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed, Stephen Kalin and Reuters TV in Baghdad and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Catherine Evans)

Effort to revive Afghanistan peace talks begins in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States held talks on Monday to resurrect a stalled Afghan peace process and end nearly 15 years of bloodshed, even as fighting with Taliban insurgents intensifies.

Senior officials from the four countries are meeting in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to launch a process they hope will lead to negotiations with Taliban insurgents, who are fighting to re-impose their strict brand of Islamist rule and are not expected at Monday’s talks.

The Pakistani prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser, Sartaj Aziz, opened the meeting, saying the primary goal should be to convince the Taliban to come to the table and consider giving up violence.

“It is therefore important that preconditions are not attached to the start of the negotiation process. This, we argue, will be counterproductive,” he said.

“The threat of use of military action against irreconcilables cannot precede the offer of talks to all the groups.”

Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Karzai and Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry were joined by Richard Olson, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and General Anthony Rock, the top U.S. defense representative in Pakistan, as well as China’s special envoy on Afghanistan affairs, Deng Xijun.

Renewed peace efforts come amid spiraling violence in Afghanistan, with last year one of the bloodiest on record following the withdrawal of most foreign troops at the end of 2014.

In recent months the Taliban have won territory in the southern province of Helmand, briefly captured the northern city of Kunduz and launched a series of suicide bombs in the capital, underlining how hard Afghan government forces are finding it fighting on their own.

Peace efforts last year stalled after the Taliban announced that their founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been dead for two years, throwing the militant group into disarray as rival factions fought for supremacy.

The Taliban, who were ousted in 2001, remain split on whether to take part in talks.

Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s faction has shown signs of warming to the idea of eventually joining peace talks, and other groups are considering negotiating, senior members of the movement said last week.

But a splinter group headed by Mullah Mohammad Rasool Akhund, which rejects Mansour’s authority, has dismissed any talks where a mediating role is played by Pakistan, which observers say holds significant sway among Taliban commanders holed up near its border with Afghanistan, or the United States or China.

“We have a very clear-cut stance about peace talks: all the foreign occupying forces would need to be withdrawn,” Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, Rasool’s deputy, told Reuters on Monday.

“The issue is between the Afghans and only the Afghans can resolve it. We would not allow any third force to mediate between us.”

Officials are keen to limit expectations of a quick breakthrough at Monday’s talks.

Afghanistan has said the aim is to work out a road map for peace negotiations and a way of assessing if they remain on track.

(additional reporting by Jibran Ahmed in Peshawar; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Robert Birsel and Mike Collett-White)

Government announces new anti-terrorism task force, initiative

The United States government took new steps in the fight against the Islamic State and other extremist groups on Friday, with three separate departments unveiling new measures designed to help stop terrorist organizations from spreading their radical messages to a global audience.

The Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security teamed up to establish a new anti-extremism task force and the State Department created a new Global Engagement Center that will help counter terrorist propaganda, according to news releases from the departments.

“The horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino this winter underscored the need for the United States and our partners in the international community and the private sector to deny violent extremists like ISIL fertile recruitment ground,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement about the new efforts, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Price noted the announcement came on the day that top White House and national security officials were meeting with several leading technology companies in California’s Silicon Valley.

Lawmakers and President Barack Obama have publicly called for more to be done to help prevent terrorist organizations from using social media to share information about their actions and messages. In December, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism released a report that said it identified at least 300 Islamic State sympathizers in the United States who spread propaganda or communicated with other “like-minded individuals” on social media.

Following the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, lawmakers proposed legislation that would require social media companies to report any evidence of terrorist activities to the proper authorities. The Department of Justice has said one of the San Bernardino shooters pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State on Facebook on the morning of the deadly rampage.

“Today’s developments reflect President Obama’s commitment to take every possible action to confront and interdict terrorist activities wherever they occur, including online,” Price said in a statement.

The State Department said its Global Engagement Center would “more effectively coordinate, integrate and synchronize” its anti-terrorism communications. The State Department currently runs a social media campaign called “Think Again Turn Away,” that says it offers “truths about terrorism.” Its recent Twitter postings tout victories the United States-led coalition and Iraqi military have scored against ISIS, including killing of 75 terrorists and destroying equipment.

It’s not exactly clear if or how this new effort will differ from the existing campaign.

The State Department’s news release said the Global Engagement Center will “focus more on empowering and enabling partners … who are able to speak out against these groups and provide an alternative to ISIL’s nihilistic vision.” The department said the efforts will center on things like how terrorists treat women and defectors, rather than what the groups publicize.

The Department of Justice said the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force is part of the government’s increased effort “to prevent extremists from radicalizing and mobilizing recruits, especially here at home.” The task force will aim to coordinate the anti-terrorism efforts of a variety of government agencies, bringing officials from the Homeland Security and Justice departments, FBI and National Counterterrorism Center together under one roof.

Islamic State claims Libyan police center bombing

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a suicide truck bombing on a Libyan police training center on Thursday that killed at least 47 people, in the worst such attack since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Islamic State fighters have expanded their presence in the North African state, taking advantage of turmoil to control the city of Sirte and launch attacks on oilfields and key oil ports.

“This operation is one in a series of the battle of Abu al-Mughira al-Qahtani, which will not stop until we liberate all Libya,” Islamic State’s Tripoli militancy said in a statement.

The group said one of its militants had died carrying out the suicide bomb attack. Libyan authorities have not confirmed that.

The truck bomb exploded at the police training center in the coastal town of Zliten just as hundreds of recruits had gathered for a morning meeting. More than 100 people were also wounded, many by shrapnel.

Since a NATO-backed revolt ousted Gaddafi, Libya has slipped deeper into turmoil, with two rival governments and a range of armed factions locked in a struggle for control of the OPEC state and its oil wealth.

In the chaos, Islamic State militants have grown in strength, targeting Tripoli and also oil infrastructure, including this week’s shelling of two major oil export terminals in the east.

Western powers are pushing Libya’s factions to back a U.N.-brokered plan for a national unity government to join forces against Islamic State militants, but the agreement faces major resistance from several factions on the ground.

Libya’s prime minister-designate under the U.N.-backed plan, Fayez Seraj, said in Tunis on Friday that the council nominated to name a new government was committed to doing so by the agreed deadline of Jan. 17.

Speaking after a meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, he said the two had discussed counter-terrorism policy, and in particular assistance with border controls.

Mogherini said Thursday’s attacks and those at the oil terminals “remind us that the security situation in Libya needs to be tackled immediately and with unity”.

She said the international community was ready to offer support, but Libya should decide the terms.

“The best way to respond to the attacks by Daesh (Islamic State) on Libyan territory is unity among Libyans and their own fight against terrorism,” she said.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Aziz El Yaakoubi in Rabat and Aidan Lewis in Tunis; writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Andrew Roche)

Erdogan says attempted Islamic State attack vindicates Iraq deployment

ANKARA/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – An attempted attack by Islamic State on a military base in northern Iraq shows Turkey’s decision to deploy troops there was justified, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, suggesting Russia was stirring up a row over the issue.

Turkey deployed a force protection unit of around 150 troops to northern Iraq in December citing heightened security risks near Bashiqa, where its soldiers have been training an Iraqi militia to fight Islamic State. Baghdad objected to the troop deployment, however.

The head of the Sunni militia said his fighters and Turkish forces launched a joint “pre-emptive” attack on Islamic State around 10 km (6 miles) south of the base on Wednesday because the militants were building capacity to launch rockets at it.

“Our forces managed to detect the position of these rockets so they conducted a preemptive strike,” Atheel al-Nujaifi, former governor of the nearby Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul, told Reuters.

“This operation was ended without a single rocket being launched at the camp,” he said.

Erdogan said no Turkish soldiers were harmed while 18 Islamic State militants were killed.

“This incident shows what a correct step it was, the one regarding Bashiqa. It is clear that with our armed soldiers there, our officers giving the training are prepared for anything at any time,” he told reporters in Istanbul.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi accused Ankara last week of failing to respect an agreement to withdraw its troop deployment, while majority-Shi’ite Iraq’s foreign minister said Baghdad could resort to military action if forced.

Erdogan said the problems over the deployment only started after Turkey’s relations with Russia soured in the wake of Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet over Syria in November.

“They (Iraq) asked us to train their soldiers and showed us this base as the venue. But as we see, afterwards, once there were problems between Russia and Turkey … these negative developments began,” Erdogan said.

Turkey, he said, was acting in line with international law.

The camp in Iraq’s Nineveh province, to which Sunni Muslim power Turkey has historic ties, is situated around 140 km (90 miles) south of the Turkish border.

Iraqi security forces have no presence in Nineveh after collapsing in June 2014 in the face of a lightning advance by Islamic State.

Ankara has acknowledged there was a “miscommunication” with Baghdad over the troop deployment.

It later withdrew some soldiers to another base in the nearby autonomous Kurdistan region and said it would continue to pull out of Nineveh. But Erdogan has ruled out a full withdrawal.

Nujaifi said the international coalition bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria had supported ground forces with air strikes in Wednesday’s operation.

The coalition said it launched four strikes near Mosul on Wednesday, but a spokesman said they were not in direct support of the Turkish-Iraqi operation at Bashiqa.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk, Ralph Boulton and Hugh Lawson)

Belgium says found possible Paris attacks bomb factory in December raid

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian investigators believe explosives used in the attacks in Paris in November may have been made in an apartment in Brussels that was rented under a false name and where a fingerprint of a key fugitive was found.

Police found material that could be used to make explosives, traces of explosive acetone peroxide and handmade belts during a raid on the apartment on Dec. 10, federal prosecutors said in a statement on Friday.

Belgian newspaper De Standaard, which reported the raid in its Friday edition, said the investigators believed the explosives were probably packed into suicide belts in a hotel outside Paris in the lead-up to the Nov. 13 attacks.

Prosecutors investigating Belgian links to the Paris attacks said the apartment in the district of Schaerbeek had been rented under a false name that might have been used by a person already in custody in connection with the Paris attacks.

The find adds to indications that the Nov. 13 shooting and suicide bomb attacks in Paris, in which 130 people were killed, were at least partially planned in Belgium.

Two of the attackers had been living in Brussels and Belgian authorities have arrested 10 people.

Investigators also found a fingerprint of Salah Abdeslam, the brother of one of the attackers, who returned from Paris the morning after the attacks and has still not been found.

Many of those arrested in Belgium have links to Abdeslam, including two who drove from Brussels hours after the attacks to pick him up and another who drove him from one part of Brussels to Schaerbeek after his return.

According to De Standaard, investigators believe the fingerprint indicates Abdeslam used the flat as a safe house after the attacks, given signs that the apartment had been partially cleaned up, although they do not know how long he stayed there.

Belgian media also said this week investigators also now believe that two men controlled the Nov. 13 attacks by sending SMS text messages from Belgium during the evening.

Prosecutors appealed to the public for help on Dec. 4 in the hunt for these two men who traveled with Abdeslam to Hungary in September using fake identity cards with the names Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal. Grainy images of their faces are shown on the federal police’s website.

The two, clearly older than the attackers, are believe to have played a pivotal role, according to Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, in assuring logistics for the operation that was months in the planning.

The same false identity of Soufiane Kayal was used to rent a property in the Belgian town of Auvelais that possibly served as a safe house.

The other false identity card, for Samir Bouzid, was used four days after the attacks to transfer 750 euros at a Western Union office in Brussels to Hasna Aitboulahcen, who died in a police assault in St Denis on Nov. 18.

Separately, federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw warned in an interview on broadcaster VTM late on Thursday that the Jan. 15 anniversary of a foiled attack on Belgian soil could prompt someone to launch an attack in the country.

“We know that they opt for symbolic dates although on the other hand no one knows why Charlie Hebdo took place on Jan. 7,” he said.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Toby Chopra)