At least eight militants were shot dead and two Pakistani soldiers died in a skirmish along the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military said according to rferl.org.

“Terrorists from Afghanistan side attempted attack on Pakistani posts” along the border in Bajaur in the tribal districts of northwest Pakistan, the military said in a statement, adding that 8-10 of the attackers were killed.

Two soldiers — Captain Junaid Hafeez and Sepoy Raham — died while four soldiers sustained injuries, it said.

AFP cited Pakistani security officials as saying the attack occurred on November 13.

Afghanistan’s failure to control its side of the border made it easy for “terrorists” to launch such raids, the Pakistani military said.

There was no immediate response from the Afghan government. Independent verification of the incident was not possible as the area is largely closed off to reporters.

Islamabad and Kabul regularly accuse each other of harboring militants who cross their porous, 2,400-kilometer long border to carry out attacks.

Over recent decades, members of the Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups have operated seemingly with impunity in the region.

In March, Pakistan began what it said were plans to fence much of the border, which follows the so-called Durand Line that was drawn by British rulers in 1896.

Kabul does not recognize the Durand Line as an international border and has objected to Pakistan’s new border fortifications.

The fencing also threatens to disrupt the daily lives of people living in communities that straddle the border. In some villages, mosques and houses reportedly have one door in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan.

They now face stricter controls and must use official crossing points, which are subject to delays and frequent closures.

“Terrorists from Afghanistan side attempted attack on Pakistani posts” along the border in Bajaur in the tribal districts of northwest Pakistan, the military said in a statement, adding that 8-10 of the attackers were killed.

Two soldiers — Captain Junaid Hafeez and Sepoy Raham — died while four soldiers sustained injuries, it said.

AFP cited Pakistani security officials as saying the attack occurred on November 13.

Afghanistan’s failure to control its side of the border made it easy for “terrorists” to launch such raids, the Pakistani military said.

There was no immediate response from the Afghan government. Independent verification of the incident was not possible as the area is largely closed off to reporters.

Islamabad and Kabul regularly accuse each other of harboring militants who cross their porous, 2,400-kilometer long border to carry out attacks.

Over recent decades, members of the Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups have operated seemingly with impunity in the region.

In March, Pakistan began what it said were plans to fence much of the border, which follows the so-called Durand Line that was drawn by British rulers in 1896.

Kabul does not recognize the Durand Line as an international border and has objected to Pakistan’s new border fortifications.

The fencing also threatens to disrupt the daily lives of people living in communities that straddle the border. In some villages, mosques and houses reportedly have one door in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan.

They now face stricter controls and must use official crossing points, which are subject to delays and frequent closures.

.

“Terrorists from Afghanistan side attempted attack on Pakistani posts” along the border in Bajaur in the tribal districts of northwest Pakistan, the military said in a statement, adding that 8-10 of the attackers were killed.

Two soldiers — Captain Junaid Hafeez and Sepoy Raham — died while four soldiers sustained injuries, it said.

AFP cited Pakistani security officials as saying the attack occurred on November 13.

Afghanistan’s failure to control its side of the border made it easy for “terrorists” to launch such raids, the Pakistani military said.

There was no immediate response from the Afghan government. Independent verification of the incident was not possible as the area is largely closed off to reporters.

Islamabad and Kabul regularly accuse each other of harboring militants who cross their porous, 2,400-kilometer long border to carry out attacks.

Over recent decades, members of the Afghan Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other extremist groups have operated seemingly with impunity in the region.

In March, Pakistan began what it said were plans to fence much of the border, which follows the so-called Durand Line that was drawn by British rulers in 1896.

Kabul does not recognize the Durand Line as an international border and has objected to Pakistan’s new border fortifications.

The fencing also threatens to disrupt the daily lives of people living in communities that straddle the border. In some villages, mosques and houses reportedly have one door in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan.

They now face stricter controls and must use official crossing points, which are subject to delays and frequent closures.

The Afghan Taliban attacked more than a dozen checkpoints over six hours in the southern province of Kandahar, killing 22 police and wounding 15, officials said on Tuesday, as militants killed eight soldiers in the west in a growing insurgency, like reported by reuters.com.

Government forces killed 45 insurgents and wounded 35 and none of the police checkpoints was captured in the overnight attacks, officials said.

“Our forces resisted until they received reinforcements and air support,” said Zia Durrani, spokesman for Kandahar’s police chief. “The Taliban were defeated.”

The Taliban told reporters by WhatsApp that they killed 43 police and members of a militia and destroyed 13 armoured vehicles.

The insurgents often exaggerate battlefield casualties.

The Taliban, fighting to restore Islamic rule after their 2001 ouster by U.S.-led troops, also attacked Bala Boluk, in the western province of Farah, on Tuesday, killing eight soldiers and wounding three, according to the provincial government.

The government’s control or influence over the country has fallen to just under 60 percent, down six percentage points from last year, according to the United States’ Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Officials said to tolonews.com the attack happened on Sunday night when Taliban insurgents stormed a police check post

At least eight police soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack on a police check post in Farah province, local officials said Monday.

According to the officials the incident took place late Sunday night in Regi area of Farah city.

One other police soldier was wounded in the attack.

Mohammad Aqbal Baher, Farah police spokesman, confirmed the incident and said that the Taliban attacked and destroyed the check post.

Meanwhile Mohammad Nasir Mahri spokesman for the governor said they believed one of the soldiers colluded with the Taliban over the attack.

Taliban took all the weapons from the check post with them, officials said.

Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Defense heads of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member-states revealed Thursday their concerns that terrorists may recruit Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar, like reported by aa.com.tr.

Philippines’ Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana said defenseministers from Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia, and the U.S. have raised the concerns and urged Myanmar to do more about the matter.

The UN said over 600,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh since violence against the persecuted minority erupted in Rakhine state in August.
Lorenzana, who cited the statement of Myanmar defense minister Sein Win, said they are not actually trying to drive these people away, but are just trying to prevent the influx of other people coming from Bangladesh.

He said the concern of ASEAN is that these refugees might find their way into some terrorist camps and train, and then they will train the other camps in the region, and it will become a problem.

According to Lorenzana, some 200,000 more Rohingya refugees were driven to Malaysia while others are in Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

Mentioning the recent battles in the predominantly Muslim southern city of Marawi, Lorenzana called it “an eye-opener for all of us.”

“Marawi showed us in the defense department how woefully inadequate our capabilities are to face this kind of problem,” he said. “We had been in denial mode that they (Daesh) have access here until Marawi broke out.”

Lorenzana continued that over the past years defense officials in ASEAN have been in touch with their counterparts in the Middle East who are fighting Daesh, which had directed their fighters to return home in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and even Singapore.

The Filipino defense chief said the Middle Eastern officials had given names of these fighters to Filipino officials, and that they are very anxious to find out if they find their way back home.
Since October 2016, Myanmar’s army has been carrying out a military crackdown in Rakhine, where a large number of the Rohingya live.

The Rohingya refugees have been fleeing amid persecution at the hands of Buddhists and the military, as Myanmar refuses to recognize the mainly Muslim minority group as citizens.

The helicopter plunged downward and looked like it might crash, before deftly lifting its nose and continuing its flight.

“That move right there is an auto rotation,” Army Maj. Alexmi Lugo said, looking up and squinting in the bright Kandahari sun. “The pilot’s practicing how to land the aircraft when the engine goes out.”

Lugo, a program manager with NATO’s Train, Advise, Assist Command-Air unit, is laying the groundwork for the Afghan air force’s new UH-60 Black Hawk program that is reportedly costing the U.S. more than $1 billion. The pilot flying above was one of the first Afghan trainees on the new choppers, like reported by stripes.com.

Afghanistan is scheduled to receive 159 U.S.-funded Black Hawks by 2024 to replace an aging fleet of Russian-made Mi-17s, part of a larger modernization effort that will more than double the aircraft in the air force’s inventory.

As insurgents continue to make gains 16 years into the war, U.S. and Afghan military leaders say that stronger air capabilities will give Afghan forces a distinct advantage on the battlefield, enabling them to defeat more enemies and rely less on U.S. combat support.

As part of the Black Hawk deal, UH-60A models are being upgraded to a UH-60A+ variant with more powerful engines. Fifty-eight of the aircraft will be fitted with additional rocket pods and machine guns to provide close air support like the Mi-17s — the current backbone of the Afghan air force, used primarily for transporting troops and supplies and performing medical evacuations.

Restrictions on doing business with Russian arms manufacturers have prevented the U.S., which supports the Afghan military financially, from providing new Mi-17 parts and aircraft. Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has warned the fleet is becoming unsustainable.

Critics have called the switch politically motivated and fear that a transition to the American-made aircraft could hurt Afghan forces in the short term. Lugo dismissed those concerns.

“I’m pretty sure these guys flying the Mi-17s will be able to transition,” he said, adding that basic rotary wing skills are transferable between aircraft. “At the end of the day, they’re flying helicopters.”

The Afghans have received two Black Hawks so far, with two more expected later this month. Just days after the first helicopters touched down at Kandahar Air Filed, six pilots began a six-week training course to learn how to fly them.

The trainees were reviewing emergency procedures four weeks into the course at their training school in a dusty corner of the base.

“Of course, flying any new aircraft is challenging,” said Capt. Jawad Saqib, 32. “But we love it. The systems are different, but it’s suitable and it’s stable.”

Contractors from the Huntsville, Ala.-based Science & Engineering Services run the school. The trainees normally get about 90 minutes of flight practice each day, followed by several hours of classroom instruction, during which they review a 4-inch-thick training manual that they must partly memorize.

“There are many more things we have to think about,” Saqib said. “We’re all studying until night.”

After the six-week aircraft qualification course is finished, the trainees must go through 10 weeks of mission training. Those who pass will fly missions with U.S. military advisers until they are deemed proficient to operate alone, which could take up to a year, officials said.

Training for special mission operators — who take care of cargo, man airborne weapons and perform limited maintenance — will also start in the coming months. The goal is to have four UH-60 crews — comprised of two pilots and two special mission operators — operating in the 2018 fighting season, which begins in the spring.

“That’s what we’ve promised Gen. Nicholson,” said Air Force Col. Darryl Insley, Vice Commander of Train, Advise, Assist Command-Air. “And then for fighting season ’19, the plan is to get 32 crews, so it’s pretty aggressive.”

For now, the focus remains on training pilots, a task made more difficult because it’s happening during a war.

“This is not the only game in town,” Lugo said on the tarmac as Reaper drones and other aircraft used by the U.S.’s Freedom’s Sentinel counterterrorism mission and the Afghan military intermittently took off and landed around him.

Not only do the trainee pilots make way for other operations at the base, but the hostile environment means they can’t land their aircraft just anywhere.

While practicing his morning maneuvers, Capt. Zabihullah Dorandish, 27, circled above the heavily protected base over a dozen times before landing.

“Today was perfect,” he said confidently as he took off his helmet and held it by his side. “It will do well. The power is good and flying it is starting to become normal for us.”

“The most complicated thing was with the radio communication,” he added. “I didn’t catch everything.”

The radio communication was in English. Language proficiency for both pilots and maintainers has concerned some observing the air force’s development.

Plans for a UH-60 maintenance training program have not yet been finalized, according to NATO officials, who say contractors will perform maintenance for the time being.

It takes five years to train a maintainer, as opposed to three years for a pilot with no prior experience.

In a cavernous hangar in another area of the base, metal tools clanked as Afghans performed maintenance work high atop an Mi-17. Because the Afghans have had Mi-17s for decades, they’re often able to work in their own language.

As the Russian aircraft get phased out, they’ll need to know English to read the Black Hawk technical manuals.

“The literacy rate in Dari and Pashto isn’t the greatest, and now you’ve got to teach them English. It’s going to be a pretty big challenge,” said Air Force Maj. Charles Shultz, commander of the 442nd Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron, who works with the maintainers.

But the maintainers have welcomed the UH-60s arrival, Shultz said.

It’s a feeling that seemed ubiquitous at the Kandahar base: While shifting to the Black Hawks may pose challenges, it’s necessary to beat the insurgents.

“The tool to fight is very, very important,” said Sadat, one of the UH-60 trainee pilots, who asked to be identified by one name for security reasons. “If you have better tools than the enemies, absolutely you are going to have more success than them.”

The Taliban insurgents suffered casualties in the latest attack of the loyalists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group in eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

According to the local officials, the ISIS militants launched an attack on Taliban insurgents in Mullah Village of Chaparhar district late on Tuesday night.

The officials further added that the attack erupted an infighting that left at least three Taliban insurgents dead and three others wounded.

In the meantime, the provincial government media office in a statement said a member of the ISIS terrorist group was killed in an airstrike conducted in Haska Mina district late on Tuesday night.

At least one ISIS member was also wounded in the air raid which was conducted in Payin area of the district.

On the other hand, a clash broke out between the Taliban insurgents and Afghan forces in Bati Kot district on Tuesday which resulted into the killing of a Taliban local leader while another Taliban member was wounded.

This comes as Afghan security forces are busy conducting counter-terrorism operations against the IS and other insurgent groups in this province.

The US forces based in Afghanistan also support the Afghan forces in their fight against the terrorist groups and often carry out airstrikes to suppress the insurgency of the terror groups.

The increased raids by the Afghan and US forces followed rampant activities by the IS and other groups to expand their insurgency in this key eastern province.

Forget robbing banks, online donations are now the go-to funding solution for Islamic State sympathisers hoping to finance a terror attack in world’s most populous Muslim nation, study finds according to scmp.com

Robbing banks, dealing drugs, stealing motorcycles – these are the kind of activities popularly associated with the world of terrorist group funding. But to the modern jihadi they’re all a little passé.

ATM smash and grabs, thefts and laundering money from front charities may have been all the rage as recently as 2014, but since 2015 online donations have been the avenue of choice for Islamic State supporting groups hoping to finance attacks in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

That’s according to a new joint study by the country’s National Counterterrorism Agency, State Intelligence Agency, and Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK), which examined the banking transactions involved in terror cases between 2014 and August 2017.

“Terror groups now call for donations through social media [and messaging platforms] such as WhatsApp groups or Twitter,” said Kiagus Ahmad Badarudin, chairman of the PPATK. “Bitcoin and PayPal are also used to move their money.”

Social media appealed to terrorists because it was practical, easy and borderless, Badarudin said. Most donations over social media were small, ranging from US$100-US$1,000, but the flow of aid was continuous and tough to track, he said.

Terror cells were also receiving contributions from legal businesses such as small-scale merchants and phone credit sellers, Badarudin added.

The shift online was, in part, due to a tightening of the net by security services.

“Jemaah Islamiyah in particular used a network of charities to siphon funds for militant operations. Those charities fell under scrutiny by security forces and more or less dried up as a funding source,” said Zachary Abuza, professor at the National War College in Washington, referring to an infamous Southeast Asia-wide jihadist network.

“It is not a surprise that pro-Islamic State groups have turned to social media to make appeals for donations as Islamic State has such a slick and widespread presence across so many different social media platforms.”

Indonesia has clamped down on Islamic extremism in recent months, arresting at least 160 pro-IS militants since the first attack linked to the group in January last year. At the end of October, police arrested nine suspected terrorists in East and Central Java, South Sulawesi, and Riau. In East Java, authorities arrested a man with ties to Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian militant in Syria who masterminded the 2016 Jakarta attacks that killed eight people. The man had been communicating with Naim through the messaging app Telegram, where the pair had belonged to a group called ‘Kulak Tahu’ (tofu seller).

Encrypted messaging platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp are proving popular not only with active terror cells in Indonesia, but even with militants who are already behind bars. Authorities suspect the services are used by imprisoned terrorists, using mobile phones smuggled into their jails, to propagate their ideologies and even direct attacks from the comfort of their cells.

For this reason, the Indonesian communications ministry in July temporarily blocked web-access to Telegram, rescinding the order only after the company’s CEO Pavel Durov pledged to help the ministry close down radical chat groups.

“Authorities need to be wary of the [usage] of social media because it’s very easy to disseminate

bank accounts privately there, making it easy for people to donate,” said Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta.

For their part, tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube have teamed up since December last year to curb the spread of radical content. The companies created a shared industry database of unique digital “fingerprints,” or so-called “hashes”, for terrorism-related images and videos.

“Violent organisations have no place on Facebook, we will take [the radical contents] down when we’re made aware of them,” said Gullnaz Baig, product policy manager at Facebook Asia Pacific.

The clampdown on Facebook targets such groups regardless of what they post.

“If you’re Osama bin Laden and you’re talking about puppies and kittens, we will still take you down because you are Osama bin Laden,” Baig added.

Meanwhile, online payment services such as PayPal and cryptocurrencies are also proving popular with the modern jihadi because they facilitate anonymous payments, according to the PPATK.

Cryptocurrency featured in a bomb scare in 2015, when a man demanded 100 bitcoins in return for defusing a bomb at a mall in Jakarta. That incident, however, was not linked to Islamic State.

The popularity of cryptocurrencies among terrorists has mirrored a shift in wider society. While the Indonesian central bank has ruled against the use of cryptocurrencies as means of payment, this hasn’t stopped tech-savvy users from exchanging virtual currencies such as bitcoin through local platforms.

According to bitcoin trading tracker Cryptocompare, Indonesian trading of bitcoin to rupiah has surpassed 29 billion rupiah, or 335 bitcoins, per day.

However, Oscar Darmawan, chief executive of bitcoin exchange platform Bitcoin Indonesia, defended the cryptocurrency, saying that while “one or two terrorists might have tried bitcoin”, all transactions were traceable “including the illegal ones”.

Terror funding had not entirely migrated online, the report found. It noted that wire transfers by expatriate workers in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia had reportedly been used by Indonesian jihadis to buy and import weapons from the southern Philippines. It said terror cells in Indonesia had received US$763,000 in foreign donations between 2014 and 2015. In one case, Dian Yulia Novi, a former migrant who worked in Singapore and Taiwan, had sent US$800 to an Indonesian terror cell. She was later arrested in Indonesia, suspected of planning a suicide attack on the presidential palace.

Analysts said tracking the origin of terrorist funding was vital both to understanding the groups and preventing future attacks.

“You will never stop terrorism [solely] by trying to cut off their funding streams. It is asymmetrical warfare,” Abuza said. “What you need to construct a bomb, or get some automatic rifles to siege a restaurant, or rent a truck and drive it into a crowd, is nothing. But [investigating their financing] is important to target the social networks that terrorist groups rely on.”

The Afghan security forces have repulsed a coordianted attack by the Taliban insurgents on a police academy in Maidan Wardak province of Afghanistan, like reported by khaama.com.

According to the local officials, the Taliban insurgents launched a coordinated attack on the police academy in Syedabad district late on Tuesday night.

Provincial governor Zondi Gul Zamani confirmed the incident and said several insurgents including suicide bombers attempted to storm the police academy in Dasht-e-Top area.

He said the Afghan forces repulsed the attack, inflicting heavy casualties to the assailants.

In the meantime, the security officials are saying that 15 Taliban insurgents including some suicide bombers were killed during the clashes.

The officials are saying that the security forces did not suffer any casualties.

The anti-government armed militant groups including the Taliban insurgents have not commented regarding the report so far.

Maidan Wardak is among the relatively volatile provinces in central parts of the country, located close to capital Kabul.

The anti-government armed militants are actively operating in its various districts and often carry out insurgency activities, mainly in the districts lying along the highway connecting Kabul with the southeastern and southern provinces.

While one terror battle has ended in the besieged city of Marawi, another looms as the extremist group’s many local affiliates come under new leadership, like reported by atimes.com

While one terror battle has ended, the next one looms in the shadows on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

Five months after the Islamic State-aligned Maute Group laid destructive siege to the southern city of Marawi, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana announced on October 23 the end of government operations to liberate the city from the militants.

“The Philippine security forces, aided by its government and massive support of the Filipino people, have nipped the budding terrorism infrastructure and defeated terrorism in the Philippines,” he said.

At the same time, Lorenzana acknowledged that the tactical triumph in Marawi will not eliminate Islamic State’s ideology in the Philippines, and called for stronger regional cooperation to fight the rising threat the terror group poses to Southeast Asia as fighters return home from the battlefields of Iraq and Syria.

The call comes ahead of this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Manila, where global leaders will be in attendance. Security forces have amped up their vigilance against a possible Islamic State-inspired retaliatory attack on the global meeting.

Some 60,000 police, soldiers and other law enforcement operatives have been deployed to secure heads of states, including US President Donald Trump, along with some 3,000 delegates who will hold crucial meetings on politics, security and economics.

A day before President Rodrigo Duterte announced the liberation of Marawi, troops killed Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State’s designated emir in Southeast Asia and leader of the local Abu Sayyaf militant group, and Omar Maute, one of the two Maute brothers who led the months-long siege.

Hapilon’s presumed deputy, Malaysian Mahmud Ahmad, and Omar’s militant brother, Abdullah Maute, are also believed to have been killed in the Marawi fighting.

Yet regional security analysts have warned Philippine security officials to remain on high alert in the aftermath of the siege, from which hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians are slowly starting to return from evacuation centers to their ruined lakeside city.

“The death of Hapilon and Omar Maute will definitely create a tactical setback for pro-Islamic State groups in Mindanao,” said Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Manila-based Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, a think tank. “But this will not mean the end of violence in the southern Philippines and beyond.”

Lorenzana told media that his forces are still looking for Malaysian militant Amin Baco, who he described as Islamic State’s likely new designated emir in the region.

Baco, linked with regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, is known to be an expert bomb-maker who reportedly trained under Malaysian militant Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, who was killed in Maguindanao province in 2015 in a fierce firefight that left 44 Philippine police commandoes dead.

Reuters quoted an anonymous army colonel as saying Baco could be hiding in Maguindanao or the southern island of Jolo. While his links to Islamic State were until now not known to be particularly strong, the official said he was well-placed to serve the emir role due to his familiarity with local extremist groups.

Analysts say attacks could also be organized by Puruji Indama, an Abu Sayyaf chieftain based in the island province of Basilan who formed the Abu Dujana Battalion of the Soldiers of the Caliphate in East Asia.

Banlaoi anticipates possible new attacks from Naim Mujahid’s Ansar Khilafa Philippines militant group which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State. Formed in 2014, the group is based in Sarangani province near General Santos City, a backdoor entry point to the Philippines from Indonesia’s Sulawesi and Kalimantan provinces where Islamic militancy has long thrived.

Mujahid has strong links with Mahmoud Ahmad, the Malaysian academic who helped to fund and fought alongside the Maute Group in Marawi. The military has claimed to have killed Mahmoud, who is believed to have been operating in Mindanao since 2014, but his death has still not been independently verified.

Banlaoi also points to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a militant group that broke away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for making peace with the government, as another dangerous pro-Islamic State group capable of stirring chaos in Mindanao.

The BIFF operates in Maguindanao province, scene of deadly clashes between MILF and government forces until a peace deal was forged in 2014. In the months that war raged in Marawi, MILF forces launched separate offensives against the BIFF to help the government fight the spread of Islamic State ideology in the region.

Cotabato City, the seat of government of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) that is surrounded by Maguindanao province, has been placed on high alert since the Marawi crisis for possible spillover effects of the fighting.

A dozen or so young men previously brazenly paraded in the streets of Cotabato with a black Islamic State flag, raising the specter that a locality where a Philippine marine battalion is stationed could be the next flashpoint for a Marawi-style attack, particularly with the BIFF’s presence in nearby Maguindanao.

Cotabato City Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi has denied the parade of Islamic State’s flag happened in her locality, but jas noted that security measures have been heightened to secure her constituents from possible Islamist attacks.

The Marawi siege laid bare the Philippine military’s lacking urban warfare capabilities and brought to fore the international connections of local Islamic State-aligned groups with foreign fighters, mostly Indonesians and Malaysians, but also from Arab countries.

Amid fears of a next assault or spectacular attack on a symbolic target, the military has belittled the capabilities of the other Islamic State-aligned groups to do so. The Marawi siege took careful planning and huge financial support for firearms, ammunition and food supplies for the hundreds of fighters.

Of the more than 1,100 people killed in the Marawi siege, 920 were militants, 165 were government troops and 47 were civilians, the Philippine military said. But “the risks won’t end when the military declares victory (in Marawi),” said Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC).

“Indonesia and Malaysia will face new threats in the form of returning fighters from Mindanao, and the Philippines will have a host of smaller dispersed cells with the capacity for both violence and indoctrination,” she added.

It’s not clear if foreign nationals involved in the Marawi siege have fled the Philippines or are in hiding. This month Philippine forces captured Indonesian Mohamadin Ilham Syaputra, one of the last holdouts in Marawi, who has reportedly admitted a role in the 2016 bombing in Jakarta that killed eight people. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.

In October 2016, IPAC released a study entitled “Pro-ISIS Groups in Mindanao and their links to Indonesia and Malaysia,” which warned of an impending attack in the island.

Support for Islamic State ideology “has facilitated cooperation across clan and ethnic lines, widened the extremist recruitment pool to include computer-savvy university students and new international communication and possibly funding channels,” the report said. “It means that more deadly violence in the Philippines involving alliances of pro-ISIS groups is a matter of when, not if.”

The study mentioned the slain Hapilon and Omar Maute – personalities who eventually figured prominently in the Marawi siege that erupted seven months after IPAC released its research. Philippine intelligence has since come under fire for not foreseeing and preventing Marawi’s occupation and subsequent destruction. Officials have said they will need at least US$1 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation.

On October 4, Omar Maute’s Indonesian wife, Minhati Midrais, alias Baby, was arrested in Iligan City. Police claimed to have found bomb-making materials in her rented house. They say they have investigated her cell phone to ferret out militant connections and forestall future Islamic State inspired attacks.

New attacks, security analysts warn, could come from so-called “lone wolf” Muslim militants inspired by Islamic State propaganda, as has happened in several Western countries. Security officials say they are now carefully guarding Duterte’s hometown of Davao City, where a September 2016 bomb claimed by pro-Islamic State militants killed 15 and injured 70.

At least five people were killed and 21 others wounded in a terrorist attack against a local TV channel station in Kabul on Tuesday, authorities said to xinhuanet.com.

The incident occurred in the morning after two terrorists attacked Shamshad TV, a private Pashto language channel, in Chaman-e-Huzuri neighborhood, a security source told Xinhua anonymously near the site.

The killed included a security guard, a female worker of the TV station and two attackers, the source said.

The attackers, who were disguised in police uniform, took refuge in a building inside the facility and exchanged fire with Crisis Response Unit (CRU) forces, Special Operation, who arrived shortly after the attack.

The CRU also rescued scores of journalists and media workers during a three-hour gunfight.

Among those injured were several media workers and four personnel of fire department of Kabul police.

Further details about the incident are still forthcoming amid the absence of any official statement.

Islamic State (IS) terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Afghan Journalists Safety Committee (AJSC), an independent media safety group, have strongly condemned the incident.

Media outlets and journalists frequently come under attack in the militancy-hit country as 10 Afghan journalists and media workers have been killed in the first half of the year, according to AJSC.