The Pentagon announced that 11 al Qaeda operatives were killed in a pair of airstrikes near Idlib, Syria earlier this month. One of them, Abu Hani al Masri, is described as “a legacy al Qaeda terrorist with ties to the group’s senior leaders, including Ayman al Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.”
The Taiban claimed the murder of six Red Cross workers and the abduction of two more in Jawzjan province is “the work of kidnappers.” But the group has attacked NGOs in the past.
The attack was executed by a Tajik fighter, who may have been a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan faction that merged with the Islamic State’s Khorasan province.
The Caucasus Emirate in Syria has previously shown its forces partaking in battles in Aleppo, but it is now detailing fighting in Idlib Province.
An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) member embedded with Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces has been killed near Tal Afar, to the west of Mosul.
The Khalid Mehsud Group, which commands Taliban fighters in South Waziristan, has rejoined the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan after breaking away in 2014.
The seventh issue of Al Qaeda’s Al Nafir Bulletin, which was released earlier today, denounced the recent American counterterrorism raid in Yemen. The group’s statement portrayed the operation as an assault on all Muslims and threatened President Donald Trump, saying “the flame of jihad has ignited and reached all over the world.”
FDD’s Long War Journal has previously identified Abdulrauf al Dhahab, one of the senior jihadist operatives killed in the raid, as a member of a family with strong ties to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The video, from Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a powerful faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, highlights the training of suicide bombers and an assault on a Pakistani military base that took place last November.
An estimated 15 percent of Afghanistan’s districts have slipped from the government’s control since the fall of 2015, SIGAR reported. The assessment is based on figures provided by the US military.
Shabaab’s deadly raid on a Kenyan Defense Forces base in southern Somalia last week comes just over a year after a similar assault left at least 100 Kenyan soldiers dead.
Hafiz Saeed, who runs a state within the Pakistani state that is akin to Lebanese Hezbollah, has been placed in protective custody in the past, only to be freed.
The Islamic State has been battling Turkey and allied groups north of Al Bab, Syria since Nov. 2016. The US was reluctant, at first, to support Turkey’s ground operations near the town. But that changed after Turkey turned to Russia for aerial support. The Syrian regime and its allies also launched an offensive south of Al Bab earlier this month.
One US soldier was killed and three more were injured during a raid in central Yemen. Adbulrauf al Dhahab, a senior Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader, and 13 other fighters were reportedly killed in the operation.
Five groups, including al Qaeda’s rebranded branch, have announced the creation of a new group in Syria. The move comes after weeks of reported disagreements and clashes between the insurgents in northern Syria.
One of the alleged spies was accused of working for the CIA and directing drone strikes on Shabaab officials for the agency.
Shabaab’s suicide assault teams continue to prove its ability to strike popular hotels in heavily fortified areas of Mogadishu.
The strikes in Yemen are the first reported against jihadist groups in what the Obama administration has described as “areas of active hostilities,” meaning Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and sometimes Libya, since President Donald Trump took office.
In a statement released last week, Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, an influential jihadi ideologue aligned with al Qaeda, criticized Turkey’s cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State. Maqdisi warned jihadists and Islamists in Syria to rethink their decision to work with Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield, which has captured significant territory from the so-called caliphate in northern Syria.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a new offensive by the Islamic State has effectively cut the city of Deir Ezzor in two. The Islamic State has battled forces loyal to the Assad regime in and around Deir Ezzor since mid-2014. The jihadis’ latest assault has exacerbated the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the city.
While the operational tempo of jihadist groups based in Pakistan has decreased significantly, they are still capable of executing horrific attacks and remain a major threat to the Pakistani state.
During his last press briefing as Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter said that some of the Islamic State jihadists recently targeted in Libya were “external plotters, who were actively planning operations against our allies in Europe.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence wants to close the book on Osama bin Laden’s documents, but the public has been given access to only 620 items in a cache of more than one million documents and files.
A B-52 bomber and a number of remotely piloted aircraft pounded an al Qaeda camp in Syria. The US has already launched five attacks against al Qaeda’s network in Syria since the beginning of 2017.
While promoting its Al Farouq Training Camp, a speaker said that Taliban’s ultimate goal is the establishment of a global Islamic state.
Abd al-Jalil al-Muslimi waged jihad in Afghanistan and Yemen, and had “extensive and long-standing ties to numerous al Qaeda external operations planners and terrorists” before he was killed, according tot he US military. Mohammad Habib Boussadoun al-Tunisi was an external operations leader who plotted against the West.
In what looks to be an act of desperation to distance itself from the attack, the jihadist group has now issued three separate statements of denial of involvement.
The US bombed two Islamic State camps 28 miles southwest of Sirte, Libya last night. The camps were located in a remote desert location, but were part of the jihadists’ plan to mount a comeback in the more populated areas of Libya. The Islamic State lost control of Sirte late last year.
The suicide bombing, which left at least 50 people dead, is one of the largest terrorist attacks in Mali’s history.
Mohammed Al Ansi was one of ten Guantanamo detainees transferred to Oman earlier this week. Ansi had been denied transfer as recently as March 2016. The US government found that he “participated in advanced combat training and may have met with al Qaeda external operations chief Khalid Shaykh Mohammed.” Ansi may have been “considered for participation in a suicide attack or deployment in the West” as part of the 9/11 hijackings.