Category: Terror War

There were two attacks that local law enforcement are calling “terror attacks”, one in Canada and another in France. In Edmonton, Canada, a man drove a U-Haul truck into a crowd of people;

An apparent ISIS flag was seized from the passenger seat of the truck, he confimed.

“We believe the individual acted alone,” Knecht said. He confirmed that an ISIS flag was seized from the vehicle initially connected with the attack on the police officer.

The chaos began outside the Edmonton Eskimos football game at Commonwealth Stadium at 8 p.m. local time (10 p.m. ET) Saturday when police say a vehicle rammed a traffic control barricade and sent an officer flying into the air.

Knecht says the driver of the vehicle then got out and “viciously” stabbed the officer several times with a knife before fleeing.

The driver then struck four pedestrians before the truck flipped over. At the time of the article last night, the conditions of the pedestrians was unknown.

Meanwhile in Marseilles, France, a knifeman killed two women before a soldier was able to shoot him dead;

Police sources said the suspect had shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) in Arabic as he attacked the women, aged 17 and 20, at Marseille’s main railway station.

Two police sources said one had her throat slit while the other was stabbed in the chest and stomach.

The assailant was shot dead by a soldier from a military Sentinelle patrol, a force deployed across the country as part of a state of emergency declared after Islamist attacks that began almost two years ago.

“We have until now managed to avoid such dramatic incidents (in Marseille). I think it was a terrorist attack and the individual who was killed seems to have had several identities,” Marseille mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin

As the Islamic State shrinks in landmass, they’ll surely find other ways to attract adherents.

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani had an interview with NPR during which he outlined the new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, according to Foreign Policy Magazine;

The plan has a four-year time frame which “involves the goal of really bringing 80 percent of the territory of the country under control,” Ghani said. The Taliban currently hold sway over about 50 percent of the country, making the taking and holding of that much ground difficult, and likely costly.

Ghani also said plans call for doubling the country’s special forces from 12,000 to over 20,000, increasing the number of U.S.supplied aircraft and helicopters, and installing American advisors “at the division level to make sure that the systems processes are there.”

Defense Secretary Mattis said earlier this week that about 3,000 U.S. troops will head for Afghanistan in the near future, bolstering the U.S. force there to about 14,000, the highest level since 2014. About 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division have already started shipping out, Stars and Stripes reports.

Stars & Stripes reports that a Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction filed a report which criticized US trainers for the Afghan National Police;

“One U.S. officer watched TV shows like ‘Cops’ and ‘NCIS’ to learn what he should teach,” SIGAR director John F. Sopko said, while speaking at a gathering in Washington on Thursday.

The report said the U.S. training effort was ill-prepared from the outset, failing “to understand the complexities of the mission,” and highlighted early U.S. partnerships with independent militias and politically constrained deadlines by Washington as undermining factors.

“Ultimately, the United States designed a force that was not able to provide nationwide security, especially as that force faced a larger threat than anticipated after the drawdown of coalition military forces,” the 283-page SIGAR report said.

Yeah, if no one saw the possibility of “a larger threat than anticipated after the drawdown of coalition military forces” we need to clean out the officers corps. The Taliban was just biding their time waiting for the timetable to run out and it has paid off for them.

During the morning rush hour, a bomb, which police claim didn’t fully detonate, exploded in a fireball on a subway train in London, injuring more than a score of people on their morning commute, according to Fox News;

“Eyewitnesses have reported a bag, a bang and then flames,” [Fox correspondent Amy] Kellogg said.

She said that the deputy assistant police commissioner said that most of those injured suffered flash burns, and the injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

She said that hundreds of detectives are involved in the search for the bomber or bombers.

Another Fox News link reports that police have identified the suspected terrorist;

Sky News reported police identified the suspect through surveillance camera footage.

Police quickly called the incident on the District Line train at Parsons Green station a “terrorist incident.” It was the fifth terrorist attack in Britain this year. Police said they have not arrested anyone in connection to the bombing but hundreds of detectives were trying to hunt down the perpetrator or perpetrators.

According to CNN, Kurds turned over a US citizen to US Forces who had been fighting on the side ISIS until he surrendered himself on September 12th to the Kurds;

“The US citizen is being legally detained by Department of Defense personnel as a known enemy combatant,” [US Marine Corps Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway] added.

Rankine-Galloway referred CNN to the Department of Justice for additional information.

The Department of Justice and the FBI declined to comment.

A US military official had previously told CNN that an American citizen had appeared to have surrendered to Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

According to the Washington Post, Israeli aircraft attacked a Syrian military facility believed to contain chemical weapons.

Syria’s army command said the attack occurred at 2:42 a.m. near the western town of Masyaf, which military analysts say hosts a branch of the government agency responsible for developing and producing nonconventional weapons and precision missiles. Syria said two soldiers were killed when missiles were fired from Lebanese airspace. It warned of “serious repercussions of such acts of aggression on the security and stability of the region.”

Israel has previously struck weapons convoys it has suspected of carrying arms to Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite militia that is fighting in Syria in support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Israel has said repeatedly that it sees the transfer to Hezbollah of advanced weaponry such as guided rockets as a red line.

Almost ten years ago to the day, Israel conducted Operation Orchard which destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor facility built by the North Koreans in Syria.

According to the Post article, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had observed Hezbollah fighters training in the camp next to the chemical weapons facility in recent months as Hezbollah gears up for another season of attacks on Israel.

Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, said rockets from the production facility had been transferred to Hezbollah in the past.

[…]

Israel estimates that Hezbollah has a stockpile of more than 150,000 rockets, but it is concerned that Iran is attempting to provide the group with the capacity to build more accurate precision missiles.