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Libya: Islamic State terror attack kills two and injures four at a checkpoint in Sabha

8 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

On Sunday, a truck exploded at a checkpoint in Sebha, southern Libya, killing at least two persons, including a senior police officer, according to local police, city officials, and doctors. The explosion was caused by a suicide bomber in Sebha, a security source claimed and according to libyanexpress.com.

Al-Senussi Saleh, Director of the Sebha Security Directorate, was quoted by Sebha Council as claiming that the vehicle used in the attack was a pickup truck (Canter) transporting a scrap automobile that turned out to have explosives hidden beneath.

He declared that the bombing of the Mazig checkpoint, north of Sabha and on the road to Brak, was a “terrorist operation carried out by a suicide bomber”, which killed two Directorate workers and injured four others.

Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack late on Sunday and said that one of its terrorists rushed the control point and detonated the bomb that claimed two lives and injured more.

A decade of chaos and murder has been wreaked in Libya since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi by the NATO-baked rebellion in 2011, but this year, after countless conflicts and failed transitions of power the country’s two main warring sides agreed to a new administration.

However, while the creation of a unified administration and an incentive for national elections in December is considered as the best hope for a long-term political solution, the process is still challenged.

Local armed groups are still controlling the majority of the land, international forces have not withdrawn foreign fighters from the front lines, while significant players dispute the management of the economic resources of oil-rich Libya.

Afghanistan: women, children among 11 killed in Badghis blast

7 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

At least 11 civilians, including four women and three children, were killed when a roadside bomb struck a bus in Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday, as top US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad visited Kabul.

The latest attack occurred on Saturday evening in the western province of Badghis, raising fears of fresh violence in the months ahead as the US military continues to pull out its last remaining troops from the country.

According to AFP, no group has claimed responsibility for the blast. But Badghis governor Hessamuddin Shams accused the Taliban of planting the bomb.

Another official from the province, Khodadad Tayeb, confirmed the toll and said that the bus fell into a valley after it was hit by the bomb.

According to AP, rescuers were still searching for bodies in the valley.

Large swathes of war-ravaged Afghanistan are littered with bombs and land mines. Many were planted by insurgents to target government military convoys, but they often kill civilians instead.

The United Nations has repeatedly demanded both government forces and the Taliban take more precautions to protect civilians.

In the first three months of this year, the UN mission in Afghanistan said that 1,783 civilians had been killed or wounded in Afghanistan, an increase of 29 per cent over the same period last year.

Saturday’s attack came after a series of blasts targeted passenger buses in Kabul this week, two of them on Thursday in areas largely dominated by the Shia Hazara community.

Afghanistan’s Hazaras are often the target of brutal jihadist attacks usually claimed by the militant Islamic State group. Hours after Thursday’s attack activists launched a campaign on Twitter under the hashtag “stopHazaraGenocide”.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau killed on direct orders of Islamic State

7 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

The death of the leader of the Nigerian militant Islamist group Boko Haram has been confirmed by a rival extremist faction that said it carried out the killing on the direct orders of Islamic State’s leadership thousands of miles away in the Middle East, like reported by theguardian.com.

Abubakar Shekau, one of the most infamous leaders of Islamic militant groups anywhere in the world, died last month after detonating an explosive device while being pursued by fighters from the Islamic State West African Province (Iswap). The Iswap fighters had stormed the Sambisa forest, a swath of strategically important, dense forest in Nigeria’s north-east, which was Shekau’s base.

His death both delighted and embarrassed Nigerian and international security services, who spent a decade devoting huge resources on hunting down Shekau.

That the operation against Shekau was launched on the direct orders of the leadership of Isis in the Middle East, which is concerned by Boko Haram’s indiscriminate targeting of “believers”, underlines the continuing global reach of the group through its affiliates and the possibility of further expansion in Africa.

Islamic extremist factions across the Sahel have intensified attacks in recent months, bringing fresh levels of violence in some regions. More than 120 villagers died in an attack in Burkina Faso last week in one of the bloodiest such massacres yet recorded. No group has claimed responsibility.

On an audio tape obtained by Humangle, a respected local news website with strong contacts among insurgents and counter-terrorist agencies, the Iswap leader, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, can be heard telling followers that the death of Shekau came in response to orders from the new leader of Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.

“[Shekau] was someone who committed unimaginable terrorism. How many has he wasted? How many has he killed? How many has he terrorised? But Allah left him alone and prolonged his life. When it was time, Allah set out brave soldiers after receiving orders from the leader of the believers,” he said, according to a report on the Humangle website.

Al-Barnawi’s faction broke away from Boko Haram in 2016 following personal, religious and strategic disputes. The faction was adopted later by the Islamic State’s leadership in Iraq and Syria as its affiliate in the area after Shekau proved impossible to control.

Al-Barnawi, who is seen as a relative moderate among extremist leaders in the region, had been given the leadership role by an “auditing mission” sent from the Middle East by Isis earlier this year, said Vincent Fouche, an expert in Islamist extremism in Nigeria with the International Crisis Group.

Shekau initially escaped the attack on the Sambisa forest, hiding from Iswap fighters for five days, Al-Barnawi said in his statement.

When found, Shekau escaped again, was caught once more and then refused an offer to surrender. Though most of his followers are thought to have either disbanded or switched allegiance, at least one of the various factions that made up Boko Haram is resisting al-Barnawi’s authority.

Shekau was responsible for using young women and girls as suicide bombers as well as the abduction of 300 female students from a college in 2014, in an incident that made global headlines. His unpredictability and tendency towards the most extreme and violent strategies explain the orders given for his elimination.

The death of the former street boy leaves Iswap as the unrivalled Islamic extremist group in the Lake Chad basin region.

UNRWA admits Hamas ‘s terrorists dug a tunnel underneath Gaza school

7 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has admitted that it has likely revealed a tunnel beneath one of its schools that armed terrorist groups utilized during the recent 11-day conflagration with Israel, i24NEWS reported Sunday.

A statement by UNRWA claimed that “the Israeli Air Force conducted strikes that caused damage to UNRWA installations, most notably to the UNRWA Zaitoun Preparatory Boys’ School ‘A’ and Elementary Boys’ School ‘A.’”

While declaring the inviolability of UNRWA premises, opining that all United Nations buildings are clearly marked on their roof, it acknowledged that “no displaced persons were inside the school at the time of the strike and no physical injuries were caused.”

The statement did not mention that it is highly likely that the IDF called ahead of the strike to warn that the school was a target.

The UNRWA statement added that during a detailed assessment on the premises on May 31, the air strike revealed what appeared to be a 7.5-meter cavity beneath the school and what appeared to be a tunnel.

UNRWA said the tunnel was not connected to the school and there is no “indication of the existence of any entry or exit points for the tunnel within the premises.”

Created in 1949, UNRWA supplies aid to more than three million of the five million registered “Palestinian refugees” in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and territories assigned to the Palestinian Authority.

However, it has also come under fire for its anti-Israel activities. During the 2014 counterterrorism Operation Protective Edge, Hamas rockets were discovered inside a school building run by UNRWA.

Likewise, a booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was detonated, killing three IDF soldiers. Aside from the massive amounts of explosives hidden in the walls of the clinic, it was revealed that it stood on top of dozens of terror tunnels, showing how UNRWA is closely embedded with Hamas.

Sunday’s statement followed criticism of UNRWA after its Gaza director, Matthias Schmale, said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News that he did not dispute Israel’s assertion that its air strikes on Hamas terrorist targets in the Strip were “precise”.

The comments resulted in protests in Gaza, with Hamas ridiculing Schmale as “a spokesman for the Israeli military”.

While Schmale has apologized, he was called in for consultations with his bosses in Jerusalem last week.

Syria: Iran Guards Commander killed in a desert ambush

7 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

Iranian military adviser Hassan Abdullahzadeh and his companion Mohsen Abbasi were killed in an ambush by ISIS in the Syrian desert, according to Asharq al-Awsat.

Two members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were killed in an ambush set by ISIS in central Syria.

ISIS ambushed a military convoy in the al-Sukhnah area, east of Palmyra city in the eastern countryside of Homs, killing IRGC military adviser Hassan Abdullahzadeh and his companion Mohsen Abbasi.

Iranian media announced the death of both IRGC members on Thursday.

Sources said Abdullahzadeh was the security officer at the Sayyida Zainab region, south of Damascus, then Alboukamal area, and was one of the most prominent Iranian military advisors during the Damascus and Aleppo battles.

Iran’s influence

The Fars News Agency reported that both militants died in an ambush set up by ISIS in the desert area between Deir-ez-Zor and Palmyra.

A picture published by Mehr News Agency showed Abdullahzadeh with slain Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike near Baghdad airport in early 2020.

Syrian opposition media sources had reported about a large-scale attack launched by ISIS on Thursday, targeting a military convoy of seven Iranian militia vehicles in the al-Sukhnah area.

According to the sources, some 25 of the convoy members were killed, including the senior IRGC commanders.

The desert areas east of Homs and Deir-ez-Zor are areas under Iran’s influence, with Alboukamal, on the border with Iraq, as its stronghold.

IRGC forces and Iran-backed militias, including the Fatemiyoun Division, Zainabiyoun Brigade, the Iraqi Hezbollah and the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as Syrian regime forces and their allied militias, are all deployed in the region.

ISIS cells are present in various hideouts in Syria’s desert and they have been intensifying their attacks there.

Hours after the al-Sukhnah area ambush, the ISIS targeted Fatemiyoun militants on the outskirts of Shoula town in northern Deir-ez-Zor, killing and injuring several militants and detaining others.

In April, the Russian air force launched a military campaign to support regime forces and its allied militias to pursue ISIS cells in the desert.

For the first time, Drones autonomously attacked humans. This is a turning point

3 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

The world’s first recorded case of an autonomous drone attacking humans took place in March 2020, according to a United Nations (UN) security report detailing the ongoing Second Libyan Civil War. Libyan forces used the Turkish-made drones to “hunt down” and jam retreating enemy forces, preventing them from using their own drones, like reported by esquire.com.

The field report (via New Scientist) describes how the Haftar Affiliated Forces (HAF), loyal to Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, came under attack by drones from the rival Government of National Accord (GNA) forces. After a successful drive against HAF forces, the GNA launched drone attacks to press its advantage. From the report:

Logistics convoys and retreating HAF were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 (above) and other loitering munitions. The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true “fire, forget and find” capability.
The report says Turkey supplied the drones to Libyan forces, which is a violation of a UN arms embargo slapped on combatants in the conflict.

The Kargu-2 (“Hawk”), from Turkish defense contractor STM, is a quadcopter drone designed to carry a weapons payload. STM’s marketing video below explicitly describes Kargu-2 as being capable of autonomous attack.

How does it work? First, the shooter loads coordinates into the Kargu-2 drone’s software, and then launches the drone. The drone will travel to those coordinates, identify likely “targets,” and execute a dive maneuver, swooping down on the target and blowing itself up as it detonates a shotgun-like explosive package.

In military parlance, this process is known as “fire and forget,” which means once the shooter launches the drone, they can do something else, like relocate, prepare another attack, or even go eat lunch.

Drone experts have been dreading this moment while advocating for a ban on autonomous attack drones.

“The UN report implying first use of autonomous weapons against soldiers paints an uncertain picture—however, that’s the point,” Zachary Kallenborn, an official U.S. Army “Mad Scientist” and national security consultant, tells Pop Mech. He continues:

“The first use of autonomous weapons in war won’t be heralded with a giant fireball in the sky and dark words on how humanity has become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. First use of autonomous weapons may just look like an ordinary drone. The event illustrates a key challenge in any attempt to regulate or ban autonomous weapons: how can we be sure they were even used?”

The Kargu-2 indeed looks like any other quadcopter drone. The major difference is the software, which might be difficult to obtain from scattered bits of plastic for forensic analysis. This raises the question: Could military forces modify civilian drones into human-hunting counterparts to attack civilians?

There are some events in the history of mankind, like the atomic bomb test in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945, that are so profound, they serve as a divider between one social, economic, or military era and another. The events in Libya may similarly divide the time when humans had full control of weapons, and a time when machines made their own decisions to kill.

11 dead in fresh violence in Eastern Dr Congo

3 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

At least 11 people were killed by an armed group in eastern DR Congo, sources said Thursday, bringing the troubled region’s death toll to at least 70 since the start of the week, according to an AFP tally.

Eleven miners in the gold-rich territory of Djugu, in the northeastern province of Ituri, were killed early Wednesday by a local group called the FPIC, Mungwalu district mayor Jean-Pierre Pikilisende told AFP.

The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a respected NGO that monitors violence in eastern DR Congo, said 12 people had been executed.

Pikilisende said the militia had come to take control over the area, whose gold is mined by poor artisanal diggers.

Ituri and neighboring North Kivu province have been placed under a “state of siege” — a government attempt to stem escalating violence by replacing civilian officials with senior army or police officers.

Fifty-three people were killed overnight Sunday in two Ituri villages, in the region’s worst one-day massacre in recent history, sources there told an AFP correspondent.

The journalist said 21 died in Tshabi and another 32 in Boga, where a camp for displaced people was targeted.

Eighty-four shacks in the camp were torched, as were eight stores in nearby Boga, the reporter saw. Fifteen homes were burned in Tshabi.

A number of villagers, including at least four women, were kidnapped.

The identity of the attackers remains unclear, as the massacres took place in an area notorious for ethnic tension and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an armed group that has been linked to the so-called Islamic State.

The ADF has the bloodiest reputation of the estimated 122 armed groups that roam eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), many of them a legacy of wars more than a quarter-century ago.

Five other people were killed early Tuesday, and several others, including children, are missing.

On Wednesday, an old man was beheaded in the village of Bulire, near Boga, and two people went missing, a local administrative official said.

As of Friday, the KST estimated that at least 1,228 civilians have been killed in Beni territory of North Kivu alone since November 2019, when DRC’s armed forces launched a crackdown, splintering the ADF into smaller groups.

Russia expands Syrian air base to boost regional presence

3 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

The Russian Ministry of Defense is currently working on expanding the capacities of Syria’s Khmeimim air base in Latakia countryside as part of Russia’s plans to entrench its presence in the eastern Mediterranean in the long run, like reported by al-monitor.com.

The War Zone website specialized in military analysis had published in a Feb. 5 report satellite images showing the ongoing work to expand one of the two main runways of the Khmeimim military air base by around 1,000 feet. “The extension would allow the base to support more regular deployments of larger and more heavily laden aircraft, including heavy airlifters and even potentially bombers,” the website stated.

Meanwhile, Russian media cited a Russian pilot as saying May 27 that it is now possible for airplanes to land at the Khmeimim air base, one after the other, with a time lapse of one minute. The pilot said that the airport at the air base will also be equipped to welcome civil airplanes.

In late April, reports circulated about the first flight between Israel and Syria, claiming that a Russian plane took off from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv toward the Khmeimim air base in Latakia.

Nasr al-Yousef, a Russian-Syrian journalist residing in Moscow and chairman of the board of Syrian Today news website, told Al-Monitor, “Moscow is handling the Khmeimim air base as Russian territory, and it is trying to control wide stretches in the surroundings of its bases and allowing expansion operations under the pretext of securing them against external attacks. As per the deal to control the Khmeimim air base, the Syrian regime has no right to monitor the cargo of planes and ships entering its bases. Russians and their guests can also enter and exit the bases without the need for an entry visa from the Syrian regime.”

He added, “Since the Russian bases need many employees to control them because they contain service, administrative and productive institutions and since the area does not share land borders with Russia, the only solution was a civil airport for passengers to transfer this large number of employees in the bases.”

Abdel Wahab Asi, a researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies in Istanbul, told Al-Monitor, “Russia is completing the expansion and maintenance of the airport’s runways to be able to accommodate the three Russian bombers that it recently introduced — TU 22 M3, TU-95 MS and TU 160. However, apart from Russia’s goal behind expanding the base — which is to increase the capacity of the Khmeimim base and transform it into an operational center in the region — it is working on making it a center to facilitate logistical and strategic transfers from Russia to Syria, and from there to any other base in the Middle East such as al-Jufra base in Libya or others in the future.”

He said, “This reflects an unprecedented interest in the Middle East. The expansion also carries a message to the new US administration — that there will be no immediate withdrawal of the Russians [from the region] and that Syria is a major area of influence for them. The expansion operations make it easier to receive civil aircraft, provided that they are used in diplomatic and security trips, whether between Russia and the Syrian regime or any other country such as Israel, in the event that bilateral negotiations such as those that took place in early 2021 are conducted.”

Wahab Asi added, “Russia is refraining from using the Damascus or Aleppo airports or others because these airports might be destined for civil rather than diplomatic missions under the current instability. Russia is trying to secure the highest level of safety and trust, in case of a visit from Russian President Vladimir Putin, ministers of defense and foreign affairs, or any other high-ranking officials, including from Arab states and Israel, especially with the travel ban to and from Syria. The civil airports in Syria need costly restoration because their infrastructure has been destroyed [throughout the Syrian war] or due to lack of maintenance. Russia does not want to bear the cost of improving the function of tarmacs to expand the operation and capacity of these airports. Therefore, it is working on expanding its own military air base.”

Russia and the Syrian regime signed an agreement in 2019 that provides for Moscow’s lease of the Tartus port for 49 years, in a move that consolidated Russian hegemony over the entire Syrian coast. Article 25 of the terms of agreement stipulates that it will be automatically renewed for another 25 years if neither of the parties sends a letter of intent through diplomatic channels requesting its termination, provided that the date of sending this letter is at least one year before the date of the expiry of the agreement.

Muhammad Fayez al-Asmar, a military analyst and Turkey-based Syrian army defector who provides analysis for a number of study centers and news channels, told Al-Monitor, “Russia is working for a long-term military presence and influence in Syria, by using its aviation to all the military and civilian airports in Syria, and working on deploying ground military bases and equipping them with modern weapons and equipment, buying the loyalties of Syrian military and security officers, appointing them to important leadership positions, and sending officers to Moscow to take leadership courses in Russian military and security academies. Moscow also seeks to expand the Tartus naval base and build new floating docks to receive barges, Russian warships and commercial ships, and provide them with logistical and technical services.”

He noted, “The Khmeimim airport can welcome civil airplanes because any military airport has this capacity if equipped with additional technical features. Work is currently underway to develop the Khmeimim airport on the security level by securing air defense and enhancing the capacity, speed and accuracy in providing the necessary technical services, such as repair, fuel filling, availability of hangars and maintenance workshops, not to mention modern firefighting, steering devices, lighting, navigational devices and towers that help pilots in the take-off and landing, day and night, during difficult weather conditions.”

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/06/russia-expands-syrian-air-base-boost-regional-presence#ixzz6wj2bYTRR

Iraq’s Military Intelligence arrests 6 Islamic State militants in Nineveh and Kirkuk

3 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

Military Intelligence announced on Wednesday that it had arrested six ISIS members in Nineveh and Kirkuk.

The Military Intelligence Directorate said in a statement six ISIS militants were arrested during a raid on their hideouts in the two Governorates.

It explained that the 16th and 20th Division of the Military Intelligence in Nineveh arrested five terrorists, and the 8th Division forces arrested another terrorist in Kirkuk.

The Directorate pointed out that “the detachments of the Military Intelligence Division in the Fifth Division, Diyala Operations Command, seized equipment in one of the ISIS hideouts, including mortar bombs, detonators, and other ammunition.”

In 2017, Iraq declared final victory over ISIS after Iraqi forces drove its last remnants from the country, three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.

Yet, ISIS still has sleeper cells in several Iraqi Governorates.

Nigeria: Army eliminate over 50 Islamic terrorists in Damboa, Borno State

3 Giugno 2021 By Redazione Islamedianalysis

Nigerian Army troops operating as part of Operation Hadin Kai in conjunction with Air Component of Operation Hadin Kai have inflicted heavy casualty on Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) Terrorists group who launched a futile attack on Damboa LGA of Borno State.

A Statement by the Director Army public relations, Brigadier General Mohammed Yerima says, the terrorists attacked the town using Armoured Personnel Carriers and 12 Gun Trucks mounted with Anti Aircraft Guns, as well as Locally Fabricated Armoured-plated Vehicles loaded with explosives

Brigadier General Yerima notes that,Troops successfully defeated the invaders,destroyed the locally fabricated armoured-plated vehicles and killed over 50 ISWAP terrorists,forcing the rest to disintegrate in disarray due to the intensity of the fire power from the troops and Nigerian Air Force attack platforms.

The Chief of Army Staff Major General Faruk Yahaya congratulated the troops including the Air Component for this great achievement.