Tag: Islamic State (IS) group

Islamic State group claims responsibility for deadly Moscow concert hall attack

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Gunmen who opened fire at a Moscow concert hall killed more than 90 people and wounded over 100 while sparking an inferno, authorities said Saturday, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility.

Attackers dressed in camouflage uniforms entered the building on Friday, opened fire and threw a grenade or incendiary bomb, according to a journalist for the RIA Novosti news agency at the scene.

Fire quickly spread through the Crocus City concert hall in Moscow‘s northern Krasnogorsk suburb, as smoke filled the building and screaming visitors rushed to emergency exits.

Alexei, a music producer, was about to settle into his seat before the start of a concert by Soviet-era rock band Piknik when he heard gunfire and “a lot of screams”.

Read moreIn pictures: Gunmen open fire in deadly attack on Moscow concert hall

“I realised right away that it was automatic gunfire and understood that most likely it’s the worst: a terrorist attack,” said Alexei, who would not give his last name.

As people ran towards emergency exits, “there was a terrible crush” with concert-goers climbing on one another’s heads to get out, he added. 

Russia‘s Investigative Committee said Saturday that 93 people had been killed, raising an earlier toll of 60, according to Russian news agencies. 

Russia’s Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said 115 people were hospitalised, including five children, one of whom was in grave condition. Of the 110 adult patients, 60 were in serious condition.

The head of the FSB security service has informed Putin “about the detention of 11 people, including all four terrorists directly involved in carrying out the attack,” Russian state news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying in a statement.

Furthermore, Russian authorities said a “terrorist” investigation had been started and President Vladimir Putin was receiving “constant” updates, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.

The Islamic State group said its fighters attacked “a large gathering” on Moscow’s outskirts and “retreated to their bases safely”.

Fire contained 

Telegram news channels Baza and Mash, which are close to security forces, showed video images of flames and black smoke pouring from the hall.

Other images also showed concert-goers hiding behind seats or trying to escape.

Security services quoted by Interfax said between two and five people “wearing tactical uniforms and carrying automatic weapons” opened fire on guards at the entrance and then started shooting at the audience.

A witness told AFP it was a few minutes before the start of the concert when automatic gunfire rang out.

About 100 people escaped through the theatre basement, while others were sheltering on the roof, the emergency services ministry said on its Telegram channel.

Three helicopters were involved in efforts to put out the fire, dumping water on the giant concert venue that can hold several thousand people and has hosted top international artists.

Shortly after midnight, the emergencies ministry said the fire had been contained. Andrey Vorobyov, the Moscow region governor, later said the flames had been “mostly eliminated”, and rescuers had been able to enter the auditorium.

Putin — who was informed of the attack “within the first minutes”, according to the Kremlin — wished a speedy recovery to the wounded victims, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Putin has not commented publicly on the attack.

‘Odious crime’ 

Outside the burning building, heartbroken relatives of those at the concert spoke of hopelessness as they frantically tried to contact loved ones.

Semyon, 33, whose wife was at the venue, said “nobody knows” where she is. “I’ve called five hospitals, all busy,” he said. “I’m in a complete panic, my whole body hurts.”

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it had been a “bloody terrorist attack”.


“The whole international community must condemn this odious crime,” she said on Telegram.

The US presidency called the attack “terrible” and said there was no immediate sign of any link to the conflict in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s presidency said Kyiv had “nothing to do” with the attack, while its military intelligence called the incident a Russian “provocation” and charged that Moscow special services were behind it.

The Freedom of Russia Legion, a pro-Ukrainian militia responsible for attacks on Russia’s border regions, also denied any role.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev vowed on Telegram that Ukraine’s top officials “must be found and ruthlessly destroyed as terrorists” if they were linked to the attack.

The United Nations, European Union, France, Spain, Italy and several other countries also condemned the attack.

The White House said its “thoughts are with the victims of this terrible shooting attack”, while French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed “solidarity with the victims, their loved ones and all the Russian people”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent his “condolences” to his Russian counterpart, saying he “firmly supports the Russian government’s efforts to safeguard its national security and stability”, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

Orthodox church leader Patriarch Kirill was “praying for peace for the souls of the dead”, said his spokesman Vladimir Legoyda.

Previous warnings 

Moscow and other Russian cities have been the targets of previous attacks by Islamist groups but there have also been incidents without any clear political motive. 

Earlier this month, the US embassy in Russia said it was monitoring reports that “extremists” were planning “to target large gatherings in Moscow”, including concerts.

The White House said Friday that the United States warned Russian authorities earlier in March about a “planned terrorist attack” possibly targeting “large gatherings” in Moscow.

Washington had “shared this information with Russian authorities”, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.

In 2002, Chechen separatist fighters took 912 people hostage in a Moscow theatre, the Dubrovka, demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region.

Special forces attacked the theatre to end the hostage-taking and 130 people were killed, nearly all suffocated by a gas used by security forces to knock out the gunmen.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)



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What is Kataeb Hezbollah, the militia accused of killing American soldiers in Jordan?

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The United States launched air strikes against Iranian forces and allied militias in Iraq and Syria on Friday, with President Joe Biden vowing more to come in retaliation for a deadly drone attack on a US base in Jordan. The Pentagon particularly has its sights on Kataeb Hezbollah, one of the main militias responsable for attacking US troops. 

The United States blamed a January 28 drone attack on forces backed by Iran, but did not strike inside the country’s territory when retaliating on Friday, with both Washington and Tehran seemingly keen to avoid an all-out war.

Attacks on US troops in the Middle East have reached an unprecedented level since the October 7 attack by Hamas in southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.

There have been at least 165 drone strikes and rocket attacks since mid-October against the positions of US forces and those of the anti-Islamic State (IS) group coalition in Iraq and Syria. Yet no human losses had been reported until the latest attack on January 28, when a drone attack at the Tour 22 logistics base in Jordan near the Syrian border killed three American soldiers and injured 40 others.

This had been unheard of since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, said David Rigoulet-Roze, a researcher at the French Institute for Strategic Analysis (IFAS) think-tank, for whom “a red line has been potentially crossed”. US President Joe Biden vowed the evening of the attack that the US “shall respond”. Biden later said in a written statement that the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing”.

Iran has denied it was behind the drone attack. But Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the attack has “the footprints of Kataeb Hezbollah” – an Iran-backed militant group in Iraq which the Pentagon has blamed for previous violence.

The White House proffered a similar accusation, with spokesperson John Kirby during a press conference attributing the drone attack to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias. This grouping “includes” the militant group Kataeb Hezbollah, he noted, while specifying that the deadly attack “certainly bore the mark” of this influential pro-Iran armed group in Iraq.

At the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader

The Iraqi militia Kataeb Hezbollah – not to be confused with Lebanon’s Hezbollah – is one of the Iraqi militias “closest to Iran”, said Rigoulet-Roze. “They follow the principle of ‘velayat-e faqih’, which means they recognise the Iranian Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] as their supreme commander.”

The former leader of Kataeb Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, previously the right-hand man of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, died alongside his boss in 2020 in a US strike on their convoy in Baghdad.

A member of the Hashed al-Shaabi, an Iraqi paramilitary network dominated by Iran-backed factions, carries a portrait of slain Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Iraq’s central holy city of Karbala on December 29, 2020, during a symbolic funeral ceremony on the anniversary of the air strikes by US planes on several bases belonging to the Hezbollah brigades near Al-Qaim. © AFP, Mohammed Sawaf

Classified as a “terrorist” group by Washington and targeted by sanctions, the Kataeb Hezbollah faction has been hit in recent weeks by US strikes in Iraq, along with Harakat al-Nujaba, another fiercely anti-US faction.

Most of the attacks targeting Americans in recent months have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which includes Kataeb Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba. This nebulous group of fighters from pro-Iran armed militias says they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians. Yet above all they seek the departure of some 2,500 American soldiers deployed in Iraq as part of the international coalition fighting against the IS group. Their demand has been heard: in the volatile context, the US and Iraq recently announced they would begin talks about formulating “a specific and clear timeline” for the future of US and other foreign troops in Iraq, with a timeline for reducing their presence.

Washington’s former allies 

Among the insurgent groups which compose the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Kataeb Hezbollah is undoubtedly the most influential. It is also affiliated with the Hashed al-Shaabi faction, which is made up of former Iraqi paramilitaries affiliated with Iran and “has a major role” within Kataeb Hezbollah, said Rigoulet-Roze. The current leader of Kataeb Hezbollah, Abu Fadak al-Muhammadawi, is also Hashed al-Shaabi’s chief of staff.

Hashed al-Shaabi was launched in June 2014 to support Iraqi forces against the IS group. Together, alongside the anti-IS group coalition led by Washington, they contributed to the defeat inflicted on the IS group in 2017 by Iraq.

“There was an objective alliance between the coalition, therefore the Americans, and the Hashed militias against Daesh [the IS group]. The two fought on the same side, with some on the ground and others in the air. After 2017, these groups found their Iranian- and therefore anti-American- DNA,” said Rigoulet-Roze.

Hashed al-Shaabi is currently composed of dozens of groups and has more than 160,000 members, according to estimates by the AFP. The US think tank The Washington Institute estimated that the militia has around 230,000 members. Yet neither the Iraqi authorities nor the organisation communicates on the numbers of its forces.

The exact number of militiamen in Kataeb Hezbollah remains unknown. According to Rigoulet-Roze, the figure ranges from 3,000 to 30,000, since some of its forces are mobilized only occasionally.

‘The executive branch has no control’

Faced with the increase in attacks against US troops in recent weeks, the Iraqi government feels caught in the crossfire. It was brought to power by a coalition of pro-Iran Shiite parties and a parliamentary majority including Hashed al-Shaabi, whose deputies have held seats in Iraq’s parliament since 2018.

Theoretically, Hashed al-Shaabi and its components, including Kataeb Hezbollah, are part of the country’s regular forces, according to a law passed in 2016. “This is largely a procedural question. In reality, the executive branch has no control over these militias. These groups benefit from a large margin of autonomy, and this is a problem for the executive power of [Iraqi Prime Minister] Mohamed Chia al-Soudani,” said Rigoulet-Roze.

Faced with the increase in attacks against US troops in recent weeks, the Iraqi government feels caught in the crossfire. It was brought to power by a coalition of pro-Iran Shiite parties and a parliamentary majority including Hashed al-Shaabi, whose deputies had sat in Iraq’s parliament since 2018.

After the threats of the US president, who said he held Iran “responsible” for having provided the weapons for the strike that killed the American soldiers, Kataeb Hezbollah announced on January 30, “the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces in order to prevent embarrassing the Iraqi government”.

The statement, signed by the group’s Secretary General Abou Hussein al-Hamidawi, mentioned the Iraqi government purely as a matter of form. Iran most likely intervened behind the scenes to calm the situation, knowing that there was now the risk of uncontrolled escalation with the White House. Yet the US reprisals on January 2 against Iran-linked factions could prompt them to reconsider their decision. 

(With AFP)

This article was translated from the original in French.

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‘In the fight against jihadist groups, Niger has no better allies than France and the US’

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On Thursday August 3, the military junta who took control of Niger at the end of July said they would cut military ties with their previous allies, the US and France. This could redefine the fight against the far-reaching jihadists groups in the region. Wassim Nasr, FRANCE 24 Expert in Jihadist Groups, explains the impact this new policy could have.

To the consternation of France and the US, soldiers in Niger detained the country’s President Mohamed Bazoum at his home on July 26 and declared a coup. Despite this condemnation of the coup, they have not intervened. And the newly installed junta has made numerous diplomatic swipes against France and the US’s condemnation of the coup and scrapped its military pacts with France.

Niger is of particular strategic value to both the US and France, with both countries having a significant military presence in the West African nation. Over a thousand troops from each country are based there, deployed to help fight the surge in jihadist attacks in the region. US President Joe Biden’s administration sees the country as its best counterterrorism outpost in the unstable Sahel region. France promptly refused to withdraw its military, stating that only “legitimate” authorities were entitled to ask it to.

Abandoning Niger risks not only a surge in jihadist groups but an ever-greater influence by Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which is present in several countries of the Sahel region.

 

FRANCE 24’s Jihadist Group’s Expert Wassim Nasr explains the impacts of a potential end to military cooperation between Niger and its Western allies, France and the US.

FRANCE 24: On Thursday, Niger’s ambassador to the USA Kiari Liman-Tinguiri called on the junta to “come to reason” and warned that if Niger collapses, the “entire Sahel” region could fall to jihadists.

He went on to say jihadist groups could “control Africa from the coast to the Mediterranean” [and thus Europe].

Do you share his fears?

Wassim Nasr: I think that it is a bit of an exaggeration. But if Niger enters a phase of chaos, that will surely benefit jihadist groups.

We should define what “chaos” means in this context. One thing is certain, if the military junta stays in power, the policies implemented under President Mohamed Bazoum will unravel.

Supported on the ground by French and US forces, as well as an increasing number of drone purchases, the president waged a war against the terrorists militarily. 

The multidimensional battles he fought against the jihadist groups was based on a three-pronged logic: “negotiate, develop, wage war”. 

The government managed to conduct negotiations with al Qaeda and in parallel, pursued a policy of “jihadist demobilization”. Niger’s authorities “took” jihadist fighters and reintegrated them into local security forces, like in the Diffa and Tillaberi regions.

The government also implemented a development policy, specifically aimed at tackling land issues and agrarian reforms.

All these elements combined meant that, compared to neighbouring countries like Mali or Burkina Faso, Niger saw far fewer attacks and deaths brought on by jihadist groups. If these multidimensional efforts come to an end, security will certainly deteriorate.

But the policies already belong to the past. Military cooperation with France ended as soon as the junta claimed power, making room for jihadist groups [in the region]. And they could choose to follow the same path Burkina Faso or Mali’s junta took, a “fully military” approach with all of the acts of violence against civilians that come with it. That violence makes it mathematically easier for jihadist groups to recruit members. Bereaved by the army, civilians become driven by a desire for revenge.

What about the potential spread of jihadist groups in the region Liam-Tinguiri alluded to?

Beyond Niger, the Islamic State group (IS group) could benefit from the crisis by establishing a corridor between Lake Chad and the Sahel region. It would facilitate the transit of military commanders, fighters and jihadist recruits, who could replenish the ranks of the IS group in the Sahel.

 

© Studio graphique France Médias Monde

 

Al Qaeda has been standing in the way of the IS group. The two are in conflict, particularly in the three border regions [Edit: between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger].

But if the Islamic State group becomes stronger and was to gain the upper hand over al Qaeda, the doors to countries in the Gulf of Guinea would open.

If Russia’s Wagner group admit they are present in Niger, what consequences would this have?

On the ground, the Wagner group doesn’t contribute much security-wise to the junta. In the fight against jihadist groups, Niamey had no better allies than France and the US. The Russians are not efficient in that regard.

The case in Mali bears witness to this (when in 2022, French troops gradually left the country, leaving room for Russian mercenaries to take over). For the past year and a half, jihadist attacks have multiplied in the country and the IS group now has a sanctuary there. It even benefits from a no-fly zone that protects jihadist groups.

For the junta in Niger on the other hand, the drive to gain support from Wagner is political, as they need allies to stay in power. The Wagner group is not Russia, but since it works in Moscow’s interests, it’s associated with the Kremlin.

This vague relationship poses a political dilemma for France, who is asking itself: “Should we strike Wagner or not?” For the junta, the mercenary group acts as a shield against foreign intervention and strengthens them in relation to their rivals inside the country.

The US army has a drone base in northern Niger, in Agadez. If it shuts down, what consequences would that have?

The drone base is a fundamental factor. Let’s not forget that it is now impossible for a foreign presence to stay in Niger without the consent of the junta. From their point of view, tolerating a US presence would be tantamount to accepting the current situation. That is why keeping the drone base doesn’t seem like a plausible outcome [for the Junta].

Washington and Paris are fully aware of the importance of this local security bolt hole. If it breaks, others will follow.

This US drone base may be based in Niger, but it doesn’t concern the country so much as the region as a whole. It covers the entire Sahel.

 

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