The Taliban quickly claimed credit for an assault on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan. The jihadists’ siege lasted more than half a day before it was finally ended by Afghan security forces.
At least 276 attacks in Mali and its neighboring countries were linked al Qaeda in 2017. This includes a significant shift of violence to central Mali, as well as northern Burkina Faso.
In the first strike of 2018, US forces have again halted an imminent car bomb attack intended for Somalia’s capital.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack outside of a Coptic Church in a southern suburb of Cairo earlier today. The assault is one in a series of operations targeting Coptic Christians in Egypt since 2016.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Dec. 27 bombing at a supermarket in St. Petersburg, Russia. The city has been targeted by jihadists several times this year. The US claimed earlier this month that another major plot inside St. Petersburg had been thwarted.
Dozens of civilians were killed during a bombing at the Tabayan cultural center in Kabul, Afghanistan earlier today. The Islamic State’s Khorasan “province,” which regularly targets Shiite civilians and places of worship in Afghanistan, quickly claimed responsibility.
On Dec. 25, the Islamic State released a video promoting its fighters in Somalia and inciting attacks in the West. The group’s propagandists referred to the cadre as the Islamic State’s Somali “province.”
The video is the latest in a series of propaganda that promotes Taliban units and the network of training camps.
Yesterday’s claim was just the second released by the group this year. However, al Qaeda Tunisian branch has continued to harass both the local security forces and the local population.
Mullah Shah Wali, the leader of the Red Unit’s forces in Helmand , was killed in a US airstrike in the Taliban-controlled district of Musa Qala. The Red Unit has served as the Taliban’s shock troops and special forces.
The US military continues to intensify its air campaign in Somalia against Shabaab and its rival, the Islamic State.
The video serves as an important reminder of Shabaab’s continual potent threat against both African Union and Somali forces inside Somalia.
The US military has now targeted Shabaab forces using airstrikes at least 14 times this year. Shabaab has continued to threaten the Somali capital despite the increased US targeting.
The US military launched its first airstrike against the Islamic State’s network in the eastern African country of Somalia earlier today, complementing a decade long air campaign against Shabaab, al Qaeda’s branch in the country.
Afghan forces account for just one percent of the total number of foreign military personnel trained in the US since 2005, but account for nearly 50 percent of the AWOL cases in the same time frame.
US AFRICOM has confirmed that three US Special Forces troops have been killed in an ambush near Mali. The three are the first American soldiers to die in combat in the country.
“The brave and Mujahid nation of Afghanistan rejects disbelief, apostasy, democracy, and slavery!” said one fighter interviewed in the Taliban’s latest propaganda video.
“Last half century proves that this land was and will be the land of Islam and Jihad.”
Both the Taliban and the Islamic State’s Khorasan “province” claimed responsibility for an assault on the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan this morning. The attack coincided with a visit by Secretary of Defense James Mattis to the country, although it appears he was not at the airport at the time.
The Islamic State claims its “soldiers” carried out the London tube bombing earlier today. Twenty-nine people were injured in the attack. Earlier this month, the British government reported a surge in terror-related arrests. As of June 30, 204 people were in custody in the UK for suspected terrorism-related offenses and the “majority” of them, 91 percent, hold “Islamist extremist views.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has promoted its drone strikes against the Islamic State near the Iraqi border in Syria. The IRGC says the strikes were carried out as “revenge” for an Iranian soldier who was beheaded by the so-called caliphate.
The Iraqi government announced the liberation of Tal Afar in northern Iraq earlier today. The offensive to retake the city began on Aug. 20 and progressed quickly. Three Iraqi army divisions, the Counterterrorism Service, Federal Police, the Popular Mobilization Forces and Kurdish Regional Government Peshmerga all took part and were backed by the US-led coalition.
The US State Department announced today that Islamic State leaders Ahmad Alkhald and Abu Yahya al-Iraqi have been named specially designated global terrorists. Alkhald was the “explosives chief” for the “terrorist cell” that carried out Nov. 2015 assault in Paris and the Mar. 2016 Brussels bombings. Al-Iraqi “oversees ISIS security in Iraq and Syria.”
Nawa district, which is adjacent to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, was under Taliban control for nine months before Afghan forces could muster the strength to mount an operation and retake it.
The US announced that Abu Sayed, the emir of the Islamic State’s Wilayah Khorasan, died as result of an airstrike in Afghanistan’s Kunar province on July 11. He is the third emir of Wilayah Khorasan killed in the past year.
Thomas Joscelyn’s testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Task Force on Denying Terrorists Entry into the United States on what happens to the Islamic State after it loses its territory in Iraq and Syria.
State’s designation focused on Syed Salahuddin’s activities in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. But Salahaddin his direct ties to Paksitan’s military and intelligence services, and supports jihad in Afghanistan and India.
Earlier this month, the Department of Justice announced that two men, Ali Kourani and Samer El Debek, had been arrested and charged with carrying out various missions on behalf of Hizballah’s Islamic Jihad Organization. The IJO serves as Hizballah’s external operations wing, carrying out clandestine missions on behalf of Iran around the world. The complaints allege that Kourani and El Debek were both members of the IJO, which is ultimately controlled by Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who in turn reports “directly” to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Today’s insider attack, also known as green-on-blue attack, is the second of its kind in the past week, and the third reported so far this year. The attack took place on a base that was overrun by Taliban fighters two months ago.
On June 15, the State Department designated three Islamic State operatives as terrorists. The designations underscore the global nature of the self-declared caliphate’s threat, as two of the men have been responsible for a number of plots in Europe and India. The third has repeatedly attempted to convince his fellow Bahrainis to join the group’s cause.
According to US Forces-Afghanistan, Jawed Khan, a “senior director of media production” for the Islamic State’s Wilayah Khorasan (ISIS-K), “was killed in an airstrike in Achin, Nangarhar Province on June 3.”