Eye on Extremism
January 31, 2023
Washington Post: Pakistan Reels After Bombing Kills Almost 100, Fears More Terrorism To Come
“After frantically combing through the debris of the devastated mosque throughout the night and Tuesday morning, police called off the search for survivors of a terrorist suicide bombing in the highly guarded site where several hundred police and army men had gathered for afternoon prayers. The acting chief minister of this northwestern province, Muhammad Azam Khan, announced that 95 had been killed with 221 injured, making it one of the deadliest attacks ever on Pakistan’s security forces. The blast signaled the brazen revival of violent tactics by the extremist Pakistani Taliban group, which had once been quelled by a military crackdown and until recently was in peace talks with the government.”
Associated Press: Recent Extremist Attacks Kill 32 People In Burkina Faso
“Multiple jihadi attacks across Burkina Faso over several days have resulted in the death of at least 32 people, including soldiers and civilians, government authorities said Tuesday. Burkina Faso’s State Information Agency posted on its Facebook page that a dozen soldiers and a civilian were killed Monday in Falagountou in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region during clashes between the military and jihadis. Another 20 people were killed in two attacks over the weekend in the country’s east-central and western regions. Four people were executed Saturday afternoon when gunmen intercepted their van between Tenkodogo and Ouargaye villages. On Sunday, a passenger mini-bus coming from the western city of Banfora was intercepted by armed men, said Col. Jean Charles dit Yenapono Some, governor of the Cascades region in a statement. Eight women and one man were freed, the rest of the people were abducted and their lifeless bodies were found with bullet holes the following day, he said.”
United States
CBS News: Dearborn Man Convicted Of Providing Material Support To ISIS
“A Dearborn man convicted of providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq faces a maximum of 50 years in prison. According to the Justice Department, 32-year-old Ibraheem Izzy Musaibli was charged with providing and attempting to provide material support, conspiring to provide material support and attending an ISIS training camp. Federal officials say Musaiblibi traveled to Yemen in April 2015 and researched ISIS, including downloading propaganda and a book on how to get into Syria. Officials say he traveled to Syria where he attended an ISIS-run religious training camp before going through military training. Following graduation from ISIS military camp, he remained with the group before he was arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces and turned over to the FBI in 2018.”
Syria
Associated Press: Bomb Hits Bus Transporting Police In South Syria Wounding 15
“A roadside bomb targeting a bus transporting Syrian police in the country’s south Monday wounded 15 of the officers, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said in a terse statement that the officers were returning to the capital Damascus from the southern province of Daraa. The bomb exploded on the north-south highway near the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh. It said seven officers were seriously wounded. Such attacks are not uncommon in Syria, where a nearly 12-year-old conflict has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.”
VOA News: Ten Dead In New Toll After Fresh Syria Strikes
“A total of 10 people were killed in a series of drone strikes targeting pro-Iran factions in eastern Syria, including three dead in strikes on Monday, a war monitor said. A pro-Iranian commander was among the three killed in the drone strikes Monday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that they had been inspecting the site of strikes that had killed seven others the previous evening. ‘A commander in an Iran-backed group and two of his companions, all of them non-Syrian, were killed this morning after renewed drone strikes,’ the Observatory said Monday. The commander's pick-up truck was targeted while he was inspecting the site of the Sunday evening strike that destroyed a convoy of six refrigerated trucks transporting Iranian weapons to Syria from Iraq. The convoy was struck in the Albu Kamal border region where pro-Iran groups have a large presence, said the Observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.”
Pakistan
Reuters: Factbox: Islamist Militants Present Fresh Challenge To Pakistan
“Monday's mosque bombing in northwestern Pakistan has underscored a resurgence in militant attacks in recent months in the South Asian nation. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which more than 90 people were killed, but officials believe it was launched by Islamist militants. Here are some facts about the militant threat faced by the economically and politically unstable nuclear-armed country of 220 million.”
Outlook India: Pakistan: 93 Killed, Over 200 Injured In Suicide Bombing At Mosque In Pakistan's Peshawar
“… The TTP is also aligned witht the Afghan Taliban and has fought the West-backed erstwhile Afghan government. It's also linked to Al Qaeda. "As an ally of the Afghan Taliban, the TTP also fought the US-backed Afghan government prior to the latter’s defeat in August 2021. The TTP was founded in late 2007 by a group of Pakistani militants who had previously fought in Afghanistan alongside both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and the group has maintained close ties to both organizations since," notes the think tank Counter Extremism Project (CEP).”
The Print: ‘Terrorist’ Killed In Operation In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
“Pakistani law enforcement agencies gunned down a person, whom an official called a terrorist, claiming that he killed two Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) Kurram Agency, reported Geo news. According to the Pakistani news website, the ‘terrorist’ was identified as Umar Niazi. The security agencies arrested the terrorist with serious injuries following an exchange of fire. Niazi succumbed to his injuries after a while. On January 3, the ‘terrorist’ killed martyred Naveed Sadiq and Nasir Hussain — the director and inspector of the Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) Counter-Terrorism Wing, when they were at a local hotel in Khanewal, Punjab. Intelligence agencies nabbed the terrorist before he could slip into Afghanistan, according to Geo News.”
Yemen
Al Arabiya News: Three Alleged Al-Qaeda Militants Killed In Suspected US Drone Strike In Yemen
“Three alleged al-Qaeda militants were killed in a suspected US drone strike in northeastern Yemen on Monday, local government officials said. The attack was carried out on a car in Marib province, the scene of heavy fighting in 2021 in Yemen’s long-running civil war, the officials said. ‘Three al-Qaeda members were killed in a strike by a drone that is believed to be American,’ a government official told AFP on condition of anonymity. ‘The three were in a car in Wadi Obeida when they were targeted by the suspected US strike that killed them immediately.’ A second Marib government official confirmed the strike on al-Qaeda militants and the death toll. There was no immediate comment from Washington.”
Middle East
Associated Press: Palestinians Say Israeli Troops Kill Man In West Bank
“Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The killing marks the latest bloodshed in spiraling violence that comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits the region. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the man, Nassim Abu Fouda, 26, was shot in the head in Hebron, often a center of friction between the Israeli military and Palestinians. The Israeli military said forces asked a car driving suspiciously to pull over but it then drove into a soldier, prompting soldiers to open fire. The car then sped away and crashed, the military said. It added that the driver was taken away by Palestinian rescue services and that the incident was under review.”
Somalia
Associated Press: Wife Of Islamic State Leader Jailed For 8 Years In Somalia
“A military tribunal in Somalia has sentenced the wife of the head of a terrorist organization linked to the Islamic State group to eight years in prison for passing on information and organizing financial transactions for the group, a military official said Monday. Fartun Abdirashid, wife of Abdiqadir Mumin, head of the Daesh group, was sentenced on Monday at a military court. She has been under custody since her arrest in March last year in the capital, Mogadishu. Abdirashid was accused of frequently transferring $100 to $200 to the group’s members, the public prosecutor’s office said. She had a working relationship with Bilal Al-Sudaani, a senior Islamic State group official who was killed on Wednesday in a U.S. raid in Somalia’s northern Bari region. Mumin, a former al-Shabab cleric, pledged his allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2015.”
Mali
Reuters: UN Experts Call For Probe Into Possible War Crimes In Mali
“United Nations experts have called for an independent investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by government forces and Russian private military contractor Wagner group in Mali, they said in a statement on Tuesday. The West African country hired fighters from Russia's Wagner group in 2021 to help it fight militant groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State, which are waging a decade-long insurgency that has spread to neighbouring countries.”
Africa
Associated Press: Family Says Sudan Freed Man Convicted Of Killing US Diplomat
“Sudanese authorities have released a man convicted of the 2008 killing of a U.S. diplomat in a drive-by shooting in the capital, Khartoum, his family said Tuesday. The release followed a 2020 deal between Sudan and the Trump administration that included compensation settlements for killings of Americans. Abdel-Raouf Abu Zaid, designated a terrorist by the United States, was captured weeks after the shooting. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of John Granville, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Granville’s Sudanese driver. Abu Zaid spent most of the past 15 years behind bars in Kubar Prison in Khartoum and was released on Monday, according to his brother, Abdel-Malek Abu Zaid, who posted photos on social media showing the scene outside the prison following Abdel-Raouf’s release.”
Europe
Associated Press: Machete Attacker Jailed Until Trial For Terrorism
“Spain’s National Court on Monday ordered pre-trial imprisonment of a man suspected of killing a Catholic Church officer and injuring four more during a machete attack last week in the southern city of Algeciras. Investigating Judge Joaquín Gadea agreed to the public prosecutor’s request for prison without bail for Yassin Kanjaa. After the 25-year-old Moroccan testified for over an hour in a court in central Madrid, the judge ruled that he should be tried for manslaughter and terrorism charges. The judge said Kanjaa carried out a jihadi attack, though he said the suspect was not linked to any specific terrorist organization. ‘The judge understands that the evidence gathered supports that the activity carried out by Yassin Kanjaa can be classified as a directed jihadi attack,’ a press statement issue by the High court said.”
Associated Press: Lone Assailant Injures 3 In Brussels Subway Stabbing Attack
“A lone assailant wielding a knife injured three people in Brussels on Monday during a rush-hour rampage through a subway car before being detained by police in the station under the European Union’s headquarters, officials said. The Brussels prosecutor’s spokesperson, Martin Francois, said one of the three injured people was taken to hospital and remained in a ‘life-threatening’ condition. The two others were treated for lesser injuries. Francois told the Associated Press that at first sight ‘there were no indications of terrorism.’ He said the suspect was a 30-year-old male. Since Belgium was hit by twin terror outrages in Brussels and Zaventem that killed 32 civilians six years ago, fears of a terror motive are never far away in cases of apparently random public attacks. Social media posts showed police with their guns pointed at a man at the Schuman station, while others showed a man wrapped in warming foil being attended to by first aid officials outside it. The station is directly under the main office of the EU’s executive Commission.”
Southeast Asia
Hindustan Times: 4 Let Terrorists Held, Hideout In Forests Of Awantipora Destroyed: J&K Police
“Four terrorists linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba were arrested and their hideout in forests of Awantipora in Jammu and Kashmir was destroyed, police said on Monday. Incriminating materials were recovered from the terrorist hideout and a case was registered, they added. The operation was conducted jointly by Jammu and Kashmir police and security forces. Kashmir Zone Police tweeted, ‘Police alongwith security forces busted & destroyed terrorist #hideout in Hafoo Nageenpora forests of #Awantipora. 04 #terrorist associates linked with #terror outfit LeT arrested. #Incriminating materials & other items recovered. Case registered, investigation in progress.’ The counter-terror operations in the Kashmir Valley have intensified followed rise in target killings in recent months.”
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