A migrant trying to claim asylum has been unmasked as a suspected terrorist – after he was caught posing a shocking weapons stash.

dailystar.co.uk

The SAS troops are said to have been injured in an ambush on the ground by Isil fighters in Iraq-

telegraph.co.uk

The chief of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), said that the agency received information concerning over a hundred Daesh fighters who are registered as refugees in Germany.

According to Berliner Zeitung newspaper, quoting BfV chief Hans-Georg Maassen warning on Friday, useful tips are often mixed with falsehoods.

His statement came during an Interior Ministry meeting with German politicians focusing on domestic policy issues.

Three people, detained in Germany on suspicion of ties to the Daesh extremist group, may have been planning an attack on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz square, local media reported Thursday.

The latest testimony, which was reported by French media Thursday, came from a woman who provided information that led French police to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian who is believed to have orchestrated the November 13 killing spree in Paris that left 130 dead and hundreds injured, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The woman, who spoke under the pseudonym Sonia, accompanied Mr. Abaaoud’s cousin, Hasna Ait Boulahcen, to a hidden encampment along a highway north of Paris in the days after the attack to meet Mr. Abaaoud.

She said Mr. Abaaoud told them that he arrived in Europe without documents, among the refugees, along with 90 other operatives, including French, British, German, Iraqi and Syrian citizens, an official familiar with her testimony said. The woman testified that Mr. Abaaoud said his network had operatives in the Paris region and elsewhere in Europe, the official said.

About 50 to 60 of the operatives in Mr. Abaaoud’s network entered the European Union by sea or land through Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, according to a Western counterterrorism official. The operatives traveled from Syria through Turkey to reach the EU borders, and then spread to various countries including France, Germany, Spain and the U.K., the official said.

No other details about their movements or the time frame over which they arrived were provided.

Mr. Abaaoud asked his cousin for help with the next attack he was planning: assaults on a commercial center, a police station and a nursery school in La Defense, the business district outside Paris, the friend testified.

unian.info

Cops conducted a raid on a German refugee centre in a search for four men suspected of links to ISIS killers and possibly preparing an attack, it has been reported.

Officers swooped on sites in Berlin and across northern Germany as fears over a possible Islamist attack remain high.

German media reported police as saying that the main suspect was arrested in a shelter for migrants in Attendorn.

In close cooperation with the domestic intelligence agency, they arrested two men and one woman on existing warrants related to other matters, they said.

German media reported that those arrested were Islamists.

Fears about an attack on German soil have risen since deadly bombings and shootings in Paris in November.

Today’s raids, carried out in part by special forces, took place on four flats and two offices in Berlin and also in properties in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.

Police seized computers, mobile telephones and sketches.

One of the suspects is wanted by Algerian authorities, who believe he is a member of Islamic State, said the Berlin police.

He is suspected of having military training in Syria.

Police in Dortmund said they had conducted an operation in the small town of Attendorn in North Rhine-Westphalia but a spokesman declined to give further details.

German authorities have repeatedly warned of the threat of attacks.

They cancelled a friendly international soccer match in Hanover last year and closed stations in Munich at New Year due to security concerns.

mirror.co.uk

The President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, addressed the European Parliament Wednesday during its plenary session in Strasbourg, and called for the European Union (EU) to increase the aid it provides in the fight against terrorism.

The President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz welcomed President Buhari, elected in May 2015, in praising the “very important reforms” he had initiated, “particularly in terms of the fight against terrorism when confronted with the unspeakable acts of the terrorist group Boko Haram.”

In a speech followed by long applause, President Buhari thanked the “many states of the European Union who have committed themselves in order to save the schoolgirls of Chibok,” of which the event, in April 2014, in the northeast of Nigeria, caused a wave of indignation around the world.

Regarding the fight against terrorism, “we are doing everything it is possible to do,” assured the Nigerian President to the Members of European Parliament (MEPs). “The ability for Boko Haram to launch major offensives has been geographically reduced,” he affirmed.

On January 30, at least 85 people were nevertheless killed in an attack that struck a locality nearby Maiduguri, in the northeast of Nigeria.

Since 2009, according to figures from the European Commission, the Islamist group Boko Haram has caused more than 20,000 deaths in Nigeria, with some 2.1 million people displaced by the violence in the country’s northeastern region. Boko Haram has also struck in neighboring countries, such as Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Representatives of the international community, meeting at the seat of the African Union (AU) at Addis-Abeba, promised on Monday to devote 250 million dollars to finance the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) manned by 8,700 troops, police officers and civilians being set up to fight the Islamist movement.

“We are very alarmed by the situation in southern Libya where the arms market threatens all of Western Africa,” added President Buhari in warning, insisting on the “enormous financial and military commitments” consented to by his country in order to maintain peace.

The Nigerian President celebrated the agreement found at the La Valette summit, in Malta in November last year, which will provide 1.8 billion euros(1.97 billion U.S. dollars) in aid to the African Union from the EU. He assured MEPs of his support in the refugee crisis, but also stressed the necessity for a reinforced contribution from the EU and intensified cooperation in terms of development aid in order to fight against “problems linked to poverty, disease, and the lack of technology development.”

Nigeria, the leading economic power and leading producer of oil on the African continent, remains nevertheless largely dependent on its imports and has struggled under the steep fall in oil prices which have recorded a 60 percent drop since last year.

The Nigerian currency, the naira, has fallen. Investors believe that a devaluation of the currency is inevitable. President Buhari declared on January 28, however, that he had no intention to “kill” the naira.

xinhuanet.com

Islamic State made its debut appearance in Russia late last year when it claimed responsibility for two attacks in the North Caucasus region, marking a deadly new security threat, a report said.

The emergence of the group in Russia came amid a “no prisoners” approach by security forces fighting Islamist militants in a crackdown that led to a significant reduction in terrorist attacks in 2015, according to the study to be published by the independent Caucasian Knot news and research service on Thursday.

“2015 was the year of Islamic State and, despite successes in fighting against them in part of the Northern Caucasus, they remain capable of conducting their operations,” said Grigory Shvedov, head of Caucasian Knot. “Russian bombing in Syria, the closing of mosques in Dagestan, this is the context that strengthens their mobilization of resources and the risks of new attacks.”

Russia is on alert for a resurgence of terrorism after President Vladimir Putin ordered airstrikes in September against Islamic State and other militants fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Islamic State claimed it blew up a Russian airliner over Egypt in October, killing 224 on board, as revenge for the military campaign. The authorities haven’t acknowledged any attack by the group in Russia, though Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in December that 20 out of 26 militant leaders who’ve sworn an oath to Islamic State have been killed.

Sworn Allegiance

Putin has justified Russia’s Syrian actions by saying that as many as 7,000 people from Russia and former Soviet states have left to join Islamic State and “can’t be allowed to apply later on at home the experience they are gaining today in Syria.”

Militants in the North Caucasus who’d sworn allegiance to Islamic State attacked a Russian military base in Magaramkent, southern Dagestan, on September 2, killing and wounding civilians, according to the U.S. State Department. Caucasian Knot said that Islamic State claimed responsibility for a gun attack that killed one man and wounded 11 people in the Dagestani city of Derbent late on Dec. 29, although Russia’s Investigative Committee didn’t mention the group or classify it as a terrorist incident in its report.

It wasn’t possible to verify the U.S. report of the attack on the Russian base as neither the authorities nor people living locally would confirm it, Shvedov said.

Security services killed 150 militants during operations in 2015, Evgeny Ilyin, first deputy head of Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee, said last week. More than 100 Russian citizens were prevented from traveling to Syria to join Islamic State.

Armed Clashes

There were 172 militants killed by security forces last year and only two who were wounded, according to Caucasian Knot. “The tendency not to capture militants alive has reached its peak,” Shvedov said.

There were 86 armed clashes in the North Caucasus last year, a 39 percent decline compared to 2014, according to the report received by Bloomberg before its release on Caucasian Knot’s website. Total fatalities in the region also fell by 39 percent to 209, it said.

The security services have battled a domestic militant insurgency in the North Caucasus for more than 20 years since Russia fought two wars to crush separatists in Chechnya after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Islamist radicals have carried out brutal terrorist attacks including the 2002 hostage-taking at the Nord-Ost theater in Moscow, which led to 170 deaths, the 2004 seizure of a school in Beslan that resulted in more than 380 fatalities and the dual suicide bombings in Moscow subway stations in 2010 that killed at least 40.

bloomberg.com

ibtimes.com

Slovenia will most likely offer weapons and military instructors to the US-led coalition in the fight against the Daesh, which is prohibited in numerous countries including the United States and Russia, Slovenia’s national radio reported Wednesday, citing unofficial sources.

According to the radio broadcast, military instructors will be tasked with training Kurdish soldiers in the Iraqi city of Erbil. The Slovenian government is expected to approve the plan later on Wednesday.

Slovenia is currently not participating in operations against Daesh militants, the broadcaster said.

The Islamic State is a Sunni jihadist group that has acquired large portions of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed an Islamic caliphate there. The advance of the jihadist group is being countered by efforts from Iraqi and Syrian government forces, as well as Kurdish troops and a US-led international coalition conducting airstrikes on Daesh positions.

Five people have been arrested over alleged plans to attack several nightspots in France.

The men are said to have been plotting the terror attacks outside the French city of Lyon before leaving for Syria.

A French official said four men and a woman had been held, adding that they had already bought bus tickets to join Muslim extremists in Syria via Bulgaria and Turkey.

He added the five were also trying to obtain weapons to attack French nightspots.

At least some of the five were already on the radar of French intelligence for extremist views, he said.

European extremists with the Islamic State group returned to France to carry out the November 13 attacks that left 130 dead in Paris, most at a rock show and bars and restaurants.

metro.co.uk