Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists

Special Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists
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Ambulances and vehicles of Russian emergency services are parked at the burning Crocus City Hall concert venue following a shooting incident, outside Moscow ON March 22, 2024. (REUTERS)
Special Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists
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A view of the burnt Crocus City Hall after an attack on March 23, 2024. (AP)
Special Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists
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An electronic screen installed near the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters displays a message in memory of the victims of the March 23, 2024 shooting attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow. (REUTERS)
Special Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists
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People lay flowers and light candles standing next to the Crocus City Hall in Moscow on March 23, 2024. (AP)
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Gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City Hall concert venue in the Moscow suburb of Krasnogorsk on March 22, 2024, killing more than 100 people and wounding scores more before a major fire spread through the building. (AFP)
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Bodybags containing dead victims are inspected by investigators looking into the March 22, 2024, Moscow concert attack. (Investigative Committee of Russia via AP)
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A view shows the Crocus City Hall concert venue following Friday's deadly attack outside Moscow on March 23, 2024. (Moscow News Agency/Handout via REUTERS)
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A still image taken from a handout video shows a gun found at the scene of the deadly shooting attack in Crocus City Hall concert venue, on March 23, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 24 March 2024
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Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists

Why Russia may be in the crosshairs of Daesh extremists
  • Daesh affiliate claims responsibility for Moscow concert venue shooting, which killed at least 115
  • Afghanistan-based IS-K extremists have a ‘track record of attacking Russian targets,’ expert says

LONDON: Just hours after gunmen stormed a popular concert venue on the outskirts of the Russian capital Moscow on Friday night, killing 115, wounding scores and setting the building ablaze, the extremist group Daesh took to Telegram to claim responsibility.




Russian firefighters clear rubble at the Crocus City Hall concert venue after a deadly attack outside Moscow on March 23, 2024. (Russian Emergency Services Handout via REUTERS)

The group said that the attack was executed by its Afghan branch, IS-K, or Islamic State in Khorasan Province — the same group that was behind the twin bombings in Iran in January that killed 94 people at the shrine of former Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.

“IS-K has a track record of attacking Russian targets,” Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told Arab News. “For example, IS-K was behind the attack against the Russian embassy in Kabul in September 2022. Also, IS-K is probably not happy with the deepening relations between Moscow and the Taliban.” 




The bodies of victims killed in Daesh-claimed twin explosions that struck a crowd marking the anniversary of the 2020 killing of Guards general Qasem Soleimani, lie at a hospital in the southern Iranian city of Kerman on January 3, 2024. (ISNA/AFP)

Founded in 2015 by frustrated former members of the Pakistani Taliban who sought more violent methods to spread their extreme interpretation of Islam, IS-K has primarily operated in the ungoverned spaces of rural Afghanistan.

From this initial obscurity, IS-K shot to global attention in August 2021 amid the chaos of the Taliban’s return to power when its members bombed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, killing more than 170 people, among them 13 US military personnel.




Smoke rises from a deadly explosion outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 26, 2021. (AP/File)

US operations had reduced IS-K’s numbers significantly, but after the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 the group renewed and grew. The Taliban is now regularly engaged in combat against IS-K, as it threatens its ability to govern.




Taliban fighters stand guard at an entrance gate of the Sardar Mohammad Dawood Khan military hospital in Kabul on November 3, 2021, a day after an attack claimed by the Taliban's hardline rivals the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), in which at least 19 people were killed. (AFP/File)

Daesh and its affiliates have previously claimed responsibility for random attacks that they had no direct hand in, leading to some initial skepticism about their role in the Moscow attack. However, US intelligence has since confirmed the authenticity of the claim.

In fact, the US issued a warning to its citizens in Russia as early as March 7, highlighting “reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.”




A screenshot taken from a handout video released March 23, 2024, shows Russian crime investigators working at the scene of the Crocus City Hall attack in Krasnogorsk, Moscow region. (Handout via REUTERS)

On the same day that the US embassy in Moscow issued this warning, Commander of the US Central Command in the Middle East — CENTCOM — Gen. Michael Kurilla, told a briefing that the risk of attacks emanating from Afghanistan was increasing.

“I assess Daesh-Khorasan retains the capability and will to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months and with little to no warning,” he said, according to a statement issued by the US Department of Defense.

He added: “Daesh is now strong not only in Afghanistan but outside of it as well. It now possesses the capabilities to carry out attacks in Europe and Asia, with its fighters positioned along the border with Tajikistan.”




Caption

With Russia’s security apparatus and defense infrastructure focused primarily on its war with Ukraine, extremist groups such as Daesh appear to have sensed an opportunity to stage a comeback and plot audacious attacks while governments were distracted.

“There is no doubt that Daesh is taking advantage of Russia’s distractions in Ukraine,” Coffey said. “More than two years into Russia’s invasion, the war in Ukraine probably now consumes most of the attention and resources of Russia’s intelligence agencies, armed forces, security services and even law enforcement.




Ukrainian servicemen walk next to destroyed Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Dmytrivka village, west of Kyiv, on April 2, 2022. Daesh militants seem to have taken advantage as Russia gets distracted with its disastrous war on Ukraine. (AFP/File)

“Daesh probably saw an opportunity to strike while Russia is weakened. In the past, Daesh publications such as Al-Naba have contained articles about the ‘crusader against crusader war’ taking place between Russia and Ukraine, even suggesting that such a war presents opportunities for them.”

MAJOR TERROR STRIKES IN RUSSIA

• October 2002 40 Chechen militants took 912 hostages in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater.

July 2003 Two Chechen separatists committed suicide attacks at a rock concert in Moscow, killing 15 people.

February 2004 A suicide bomber killed 41 people in a Moscow subway during rush hour.

September 2004 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, killing 330 people, half of whom were children.

March 2010 Two suicide bombers from the Caucasus Emirate group killed 40 people in a Moscow subway.

January 2011 A suicide bomber killed 37 people in the arrivals hall of Moscow Domodedovo airport.

October 2015 Daesh claimed responsibility for blowing up a Russian Metrojet flight over Egypt, killing all 224 passengers.

April 2017 A bomb attack on a subway train in St. Petersburg killed 16 people.

March 2024 ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of Daesh, attacked a Moscow concert hall, killing at least 115 people.

Hani Nasira, a political analyst and expert in terrorism and extremist organizations, echoed Coffey’s view that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has created fertile ground for surprise attacks on a distracted region.

“Since the conflict in Ukraine started, IS-K has increased the flow of its fighters who have joined the war by going from their initial center of operations in Syria toward their countries of origin to relaunch operations in Northern Caucasus and Central Asian countries, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,” Nasira told Arab News.




Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to punish those behind the Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130, saying four gunmen trying to flee to Ukraine had been arrested. (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

“The war in Ukraine constituted the starting point for the recurrence of what happened in Afghanistan, with foreign fighters from around the world joining the war alongside Ukraine against Russia, especially since the war, for the Western camp, has turned into a war of attrition with which it aims to inflict maximum losses on Russia or repeat the phenomenon of ‘returnees’ after the war is over,” he said.

“Some of the extremists of Chechen descent are fighting Russia in Ukraine to remove the humiliating stain left by the men of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who support Russia and were described by Daesh’s members as ‘traitors and a disgrace to the Chechen nation’ because no true Chechen would fight in the ranks of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”




In this photo taken on January 09, 1995, Chechen fighters rest beside a fire during a break in the fighting in central Grozny, capital of Chechnya. After years of war, Russian government forces eventually overcame resistance. (AFP/File)

Russia also seems to be of particular interest to IS-K because, as it claims, the Russian military has a record of killing Muslims in Chechnya, Syria and Afghanistan. 

Russia has been targeted by extremist groups numerous times over the past two decades — the Nord Ost theater siege in 2002 and the Beslan massacre in 2004 being the most notorious attacks.

For as long as the focus of its defense apparatus is dominated by the war in Ukraine, Russia may struggle to fend off further attacks by increasingly audacious extremist groups emerging from its restive south.

 


New Delhi’s chief minister announces resignation two days after he was released on bail

New Delhi’s chief minister announces resignation two days after he was released on bail
Updated 11 sec ago
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New Delhi’s chief minister announces resignation two days after he was released on bail

New Delhi’s chief minister announces resignation two days after he was released on bail
  • Arvind Kejriwal, a fierce Modi critic, was arrested nearly six months ago ahead of elections
  • Kejriwal said his party will hold a meeting later to decide who will take over his position

NEW DELHI: One of India’s main opposition figures and New Delhi’s chief minister said he would resign from office Sunday, two days after he was granted bail in a bribery case.
Arvind Kejriwal, a fierce critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested nearly six months ago ahead of national elections on charges of receiving bribes from a liquor distributor. India’s top court released him on bail Friday.
Kejriwal has consistently denied the accusations and called them a political conspiracy.
“Today I have come to ask the public whether you consider Kejriwal honest or a criminal,” he said in a public address Sunday at the headquarters of his Aam Aadmi Party, which governs New Delhi. “I will resign from the post of chief minister two days from today.”
Kejriwal said his party — a part of a broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA and was the main challenger to Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in June’s elections — will hold a meeting later to decide who will take over his position.
He also demanded the New Delhi elections, scheduled for February next year, be held in November instead.
Opposition parties widely condemned Kejriwal’s arrest. They accused Modi’s government of misusing federal investigation agencies to harass and weaken its political opponents. They pointed to several raids, arrests, and corruption investigations of key opposition figures in the months before the elections.
Kejriwal’s supporters celebrated his release by lighting firecrackers and dancing in the rain outside his New Delhi residence, with many carrying placards with photos of the popular politician.
Some leaders from Modi’s party warned that he was released on bail and not acquitted.
Government agencies have accused Kejriwal’s party and ministers of accepting 1 billion rupees ($12 million) in bribes from a liquor distributor nearly two years ago in return for revising a liquor sales policy in New Delhi, allowing private companies greater profits.
Kejriwal, a former civil servant, launched the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012. He promised to rid the Indian political system and governance of corruption and inefficiency.
The party’s symbol — a broom — and its promise to sweep the administration of graft struck a chord with New Delhi’s residents, fed up with runaway inflation and slow economic growth.


Three Americans, two Spaniards held over alleged plot to ‘destabilize’ Venezuela

Three Americans, two Spaniards held over alleged plot to ‘destabilize’ Venezuela
Updated 1 min 37 sec ago
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Three Americans, two Spaniards held over alleged plot to ‘destabilize’ Venezuela

Three Americans, two Spaniards held over alleged plot to ‘destabilize’ Venezuela
  • The arrests come amid heightened tensions between Venezuela and both the United States and Spain over Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election

CARACAS: Three Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen have been detained in Venezuela on suspicion of plotting to destabilize the country, the government said, as the United States and Spain denied Caracas’s allegations they were involved.
The arrests come amid heightened tensions between Venezuela and both the United States and Spain over Venezuela’s disputed July 28 presidential election, which the country’s opposition accuses President Nicolas Maduro of stealing.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said Saturday the foreign nationals were being held on suspicion of planning an attack on Maduro and his government.
“We know that the United States government has links to this operation,” Cabello asserted.
Cabello said two Spaniards were recently detained in Puerto Ayacucho in the southwest.
He added that three Americans and a Czech national were also arrested and linked the alleged plot to intelligence agencies in the United States and Spain, as well as to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Maduro has heaped blame for the tide of adversity his country faces on the “imperialist” United States, which he accuses of conspiring with his Venezuelan opponents to overthrow him.
A State Department spokesperson said Saturday that “any claims of US involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro are categorically false.”
The State Department spokesperson additionally confirmed that a US military member was being held and noted “unconfirmed reports of two additional US citizens detained in Venezuela.”
Spain also rejected allegations it was involved.
“Spain denies and categorically rejects any insinuation that it is involved in a political destabilization operation in Venezuela,” a foreign ministry source told AFP Sunday.
Cabello said those detained had “contacted French mercenaries, they contacted mercenaries from Eastern Europe and they are in an operation to try to attack our country.”
He added that “more than 400 rifles were seized” and accused the detainees of plotting “terrorist acts.”
The Czech Republic has yet to react to the sensational claims, which come amid a deepening standoff between Maduro and Western powers.


Maduro, who succeeded iconic left-wing leader Hugo Chavez on his death in 2013, insists he won a third term but failed to release detailed voting tallies to back his claim.
Tensions between Caracas and former colonial power Spain rose sharply after Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, 75, went into exile in Spain a week ago, after being threatened with arrest.
Caracas on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Madrid for consultations and summoned Spain’s envoy to Venezuela for talks after a Spanish minister accused Maduro of running a “dictatorship.”
Venezuela was also angered by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision to meet with Gonzalez Urrutia and warned Spain against any “interference” in its affairs.
Caracas has additionally been engaged in a war of words with the United States, which recognized Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner of the election.
Washington announced new sanctions on Thursday against 16 Venezuelan officials, including some from the electoral authority, for impeding “a transparent electoral process” and not publishing accurate results.
Venezuela denounced the measures as a “crime of aggression” and Maduro decorated four military officers among those targeted by the sanctions.
Maduro’s claim to have won a third term in office sparked mass opposition protests, which claimed at least 27 lives and left 192 people wounded.
The opposition published polling station-level results that it said showed Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
About 2,400 people, including numerous teens, were arrested in the unrest.
Opposition leader Machado called Saturday for more protests on September 28, two months since the election, to demand international recognition for Gonzalez Urrutia as president.
Maduro also claimed victory amid widespread accusations of fraud after Venezuela’s previous election in 2018.
With the support of the military and other institutions, he managed to cling to power despite international sanctions.
Maduro’s tenure since 2013 has seen GDP drop 80 percent in a decade, prompting more than seven million of the country’s 30 million citizens to emigrate.


UK foreign minister Lammy plays down Putin threats

UK foreign minister Lammy plays down Putin threats
Updated 22 min 24 sec ago
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UK foreign minister Lammy plays down Putin threats

UK foreign minister Lammy plays down Putin threats

LONDON: UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “bluster” Sunday over his warning that letting Ukraine use long-range weapons to strike inside Russia would put NATO “at war” with Moscow.
Tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict reached dire levels this week as US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House to discuss whether to ease rules on Kyiv’s use of western-supplied weaponry.
“I think that what Putin’s doing is throwing dust up into the air,” Lammy told the BBC.
“There’s a lot of bluster. That’s his modus operandi. He threatens about tanks, he threatens about missiles, he threatens about nuclear weapons.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been asking for permission to use British Storm Shadow missiles and US-made ATACMS missiles to hit targets deeper inside Russia for months.
Biden and Starmer delayed a decision on the move during their meeting on Friday.
It came after Putin warned that green-lighting use of the weapons “would mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia.”
“If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face,” he added.
The Russian leader has long warned western countries that they risk provoking a nuclear war over their support for Ukraine.
“We cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist, effectively, that wants to move into countries willy nilly,” said Lammy.
“If we let him with Ukraine, believe me, he will not stop there.”
Lammy said that talks between Starmer, Biden and Zelensky over the use of the missiles would continue at the United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York later this month.


Two people die in Ukraine’s Odesa after Moscow and Kyiv exchange drone and missile attacks

Two people die in Ukraine’s Odesa after Moscow and Kyiv exchange drone and missile attacks
Updated 15 September 2024
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Two people die in Ukraine’s Odesa after Moscow and Kyiv exchange drone and missile attacks

Two people die in Ukraine’s Odesa after Moscow and Kyiv exchange drone and missile attacks

KYIV: Two people died in a missile attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa, local officials said, as Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone and missile attacks
The Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia launched overnight, while the rest hit the suburbs of Odesa.
Oleh Kiper, Odesa’s regional governor, said the two who died Saturday night were a married couple, and that another person was wounded in the attack.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it downed 29 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday over western and southwestern regions, with no damage caused by the falling debris. It also said another Ukrainian drone was shot down Sunday morning over the western Ryazan region.
While Ukraine and Russia regularly launch overnight drone raids on each other’s territory, Ukrainian officials generally do not confirm or deny attacks within Russia’s borders.
The latest attacks came after Ukraine made a new call Saturday on the West to allow it to use the long-range missiles they have provided to strike targets deep inside Russia, as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold back Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
So far, the US has allowed Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Kyiv officials argue the weapons are vital to weaken Russia’s ability to strike Ukraine and force it to move its strike capabilities further from the border.


One dead in Poland as storm lashes eastern and central Europe

One dead in Poland as storm lashes eastern and central Europe
Updated 15 September 2024
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One dead in Poland as storm lashes eastern and central Europe

One dead in Poland as storm lashes eastern and central Europe
  • The storm has already caused the death of four people in Romania, and thousands have been evacuated from their homes across the continent

Warsaw: One person has drowned in Poland and four people are missing in the Czech Republic, authorities said Sunday, as Storm Boris lashed central and eastern Europe with torrential rains and flooding.
Since Thursday, swathes of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have been hit by high winds and unusually fierce rains.
The storm has already caused the death of four people in Romania, and thousands have been evacuated from their homes across the continent.
“We have the first confirmed death by drowning, in the Klodzko region” on the Polish-Czech border, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday morning.
Tusk was traveling through the southwest of the country, which has been hit hardest by the floods.
Around 1,600 people have been evacuated in Klodzko, and Polish authorities have called in the army to support firefighters on the scene.
On Saturday, Polish authorities shut the Golkowice border crossing with the Czech Republic after a river flooded its banks, as well as closing several roads and halting trains on the line linking the towns of Prudnik and Nysa.
In the nearby village of Glucholazy, Zofia Owsiaka watched with fear as the fast-flowing waters of the swollen Biala river surged past.
“Water is the most powerful force of nature. Everyone is scared,” Owsiaka, 65, told AFP.
In the Czech Republic, police reported four people were missing Sunday.
Three were in a car that was swept into a river in the northeastern town of Lipova-Lazne, and another man was missing after being swept away by floods in the southeast.
A dam in the south of the country burst its banks, flooding towns and villages downstream.
On Saturday, four people died in floods in southeastern Romania, with the bodies found in the worst affected region, Galati in the southeast, where 5,000 homes were damaged.
“We are again facing the effects of climate change, which are increasingly present on the European continent, with dramatic consequences,” Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis said.
Hundreds of people have been rescued across 19 parts of the country, emergency services said, releasing a video of flooded homes in a village by the Danube river.
“This is a catastrophe of epic proportions,” said Emil Dragomir, mayor of Slobozia Conachi, a village in Galati, where he said 700 homes had been flooded.
Parts of northeast Austria have been declared a natural disaster area.
Some areas of the Tyrol were blanketed by up to a meter (three feet) of snow — an exceptional situation for mid-September, which saw temperatures of up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) last week.
Rail services were suspended in the country’s east early Sunday and several metro lines were shut down in the capital Vienna, where the Wien river was threatening to overflow its banks, according to the APA news agency.
Emergency services had made nearly 5,000 interventions overnight in the state of Lower Austria, where flooding had trapped many residents in their homes.
Firefighters have intervened around 150 times in Vienna since Friday to clear roads blocked by storm debris and pump water from cellars, local media reported.
Neighbouring Slovakia has declared a state of emergency in the capital, Bratislava.
Heavy rains are expected to continue until at least Monday in the Czech Republic and Poland.