CAIRO – 10 November 2017: Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization has incited its supporters and followers to carry out more terror attacks in Europe, according to IS’s Al-Naba’ magazine’s edition issued on Thursday.
“Kill people until you’re killed” was the main message from the IS leaders to its followers living in European countries, while the message did not specify carrying out attacks in a certain city, but the background image of this incitement’s topic was for Paris’s Eiffel Tower.
After IS has lost its last major stronghold in Syria following the fall of Deir Ezzor to the Syrian army, destroying the ideology inspiring terror attacks around the world will be much harder than crushing the physical “caliphate,” according to British Independent Magazine early November.
The rate of atrocities carried out in the West could continue to increase as the group struggles to remain relevant to Jihad.
A former Islamic State commander has warned IS militants are using the internet to recruit potentially deadly ISIS sleeper cells in European countries. Al-Naba’ magazine has sent many messages to IS supporters around the world who are inspired by its terrorist beliefs and carried out several terrorist attacks against civilians in Sweden, France and Germany.
In France, the matter surpassed mere calls to taking actual measures in order to exterminate French IS fighters. An investigation by Wall Street Journal published in May revealed that French Special Forces sought the help of the Iraqi Army to inhibit French nationals fighting with IS from escaping so they would not compromise the security of their homeland.
Hundreds of French citizens have joined the group since its rise to prominence in 2014. A joint military operation was assumed by the French and Iraqi forces, but no figures of killed French IS members were revealed. However, they announced that “up to 30 men had been identified as senior, ‘high-value’ targets.”
President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi meets with Foreign Minister of France Jean-Yves Le Drian in June - Press Photo
France has witnessed more than 15 terrorist acts in the past 5 years. French official statistics announced the death of more than 600 people in these terrorist attacks from several nationalities.
Islam is the second-most widely professed religion in France. With an estimated total of 7 to 9 percent of the national population, France has the largest number of Muslims in Western Europe. However, French authorities for the first time closed three mosques in the aftermath of November’s attacks in Paris.
France has been under a state of emergency since November 2015, when 130 people were slaughtered in a wave of coordinated violence across Paris. The French anti-terrorism campaign coincided with Egypt's intensive fight against terror groups since the ousting of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
The bloody attacks forced France to strengthen its foreign policy in the Middle East, with priority given to besieging networks of foreign militants in Syria, Libya and Iraq.
Egypt has a particularly key role for France regarding Libya. The French administration believes that Egypt is the number one key to resolving the Libyan crisis, as well as an important player in Syria too.
Here is a recap of major attacks and foiled attempts only in 2017:
- February 3: A man armed with a machete in each hand attacks four soldiers on patrol at Paris's Louvre Museum, shouting "Allahu Akbar." The attacker, a 29-year-old Egyptian, was seriously injured.
- March 18: A 39-year-old man is killed at Paris's Orly airport after attacking a soldier. The attacker shouted: "I am ready to die for Allah," according to the Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins.
- April 19: Police arrest two Frenchmen in their 20s in Marseille on suspicion of planning an attack, with bomb-making materials and guns found in searches.
- April 21: A known terror suspect shoots dead a policeman and wounds two others on the Champs-Elysees, before being killed in open gunshot exchange, in an assault claimed by the IS group.
- August 5: Soldiers at the Eiffel Tower in Paris arrest a knife-wielding man, a former psychiatric patient, after he leaps a security barrier shouting "Allahu Akbar."
- August 9: A car drives into soldiers on patrol outside a military barracks in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, injuring six people, two seriously wounded.
-October 1: Two women were stabbed to death and their assailant shot dead by soldiers at the main train station in the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday in an attack claimed by IS.
Image of Al-Naba’ Magazine
IS released an audio recording of its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi on Thursday, the first communication from the elusive jihadist leader in almost year, during which the group has lost much of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria.
The date of the 46-minute recording, released via the Al-Furqan news organization, which is linked to the jihadist group, was not clear. But Baghdadi makes reference to North Korean threats against Japan and United States.
The audio release, much of which is dedicated to religious scriptures, comes amid growing speculation over the fate of the Baghdadi, whose last recorded speech was issued in early November 2016, two weeks after the start of the battle for Mosul, when he urged his followers to fight the "unbelievers" and "make their blood flow as rivers.”
U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have since defeated IS in Mosul, where Baghdadi declared a self-styled caliphate 3 years ago. Militants blew up Mosul's El Nuri mosque, where Baghdadi made his 2014 declaration after IS captured the city.
Officials have said they believed it could take years to capture or kill Baghdadi as he is thought to be hiding in thousands of square miles of sparsely-populated desert between Mosul and Raqqa, where drones are easy to spot.
Russia's Defense Ministry said earlier this year it may have killed Baghdadi when one of its air strikes hit a gathering of senior IS commanders on the outskirts of the Syrian City of Raqqa, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were skeptical.
On August 8, IS-affiliated Al-Hayat media production released a video message inciting IS supporters to attack civilians in European countries if they could not “join the IS in its caliphate states,” according to the video.
The propaganda mechanisms adopted by IS are diverse and not simply limited to social media.
The online magazines – Dabiq and Rumiyah – serve to promote the religious values of the IS, promote its atrocities, and provide harrowing guidelines for how to commit “favorable” atrocities.
The jihadist group has added a new level of brutality to the phenomenon of radical Islam, having become notorious for its beheadings, abductions and mass killings in the name of religion.
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