Tag Archives: ISIS

Global stocks recover from early selloff following Brussels attacks

NEW York (Reuters) – Global equity markets were little changed, regrouping from early losses while safe-haven gold and government bonds eased from higher levels on Tuesday following attacks on the airport and a rush-hour metro train in Brussels.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed at least 30 people, with police hunting a suspect who fled the air terminal.

Travel sector stocks, including airlines and hotels, were among the hardest-hit, although equities managed to recover from sharp losses and bonds and gold eased from their early highs.

On Wall Street, the NYSEArca airline index lost 0.9 percent and was on track for its first decline in five sessions. Cruise ship operators Royal Caribbean, down 2.9 percent and Carnival Corp, down 2.1 percent, were among the worst performers on the S&P 500.

Those declines were offset by gains in Apple, up 0.8 percent to $106.72 and a 0.9 percent gain in the healthcare sector.

“The news obviously has been dominated by what has gone on in Brussels, but experience tells us not only is it the morally right thing to do to basically not overreact, it also turns out to be the most profitable thing to do,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds in New York.

“The objective of terrorists is to disrupt and, to the extent that they can, do horrible things but at least we have the small victory that they have not disrupted global financial markets today.”

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 41.3 points, or 0.23 percent, to 17,582.57, the S&P 500 lost 1.8 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,049.8 and the Nasdaq Composite added 12.79 points, or 0.27 percent, to 4,821.66.

The FTSEuroFirst 300 index of leading shares closed down 0.12 percent at 1,338.20, rebounding from a 1.6 percent drop. Belgian stocks rose 0.17 percent after having been down as much as 1.4 percent. MSCI’s index of world shares edged down 0.03 percent.

In Europe, the STOXX Europe 600 Travel & Leisure index was down 1.8 percent. Shares in major European airlines like Ryanair and Air France-KLM also fell.

Volume is expected to continue to diminish ahead of the Easter holiday, and investors were beginning to think about cashing in on a steep rally in stocks over the last few weeks.

Gold was up 0.31 percent at $1,248.10 an ounce after hitting a high of $1.259.60 earlier.

Benchmark U.S. 10-year notes were last down 6/32 in price to yield 1.9403 percent after falling as low as 1.879 percent as Chicago’s Federal Reserve president struck a bullish tone on the U.S. economy.

In currency markets, the Japanese yen, regarded by investors as a shelter from turbulence, pulled back from early gains, notably against the euro. The euro was last up 0.14 percent at 126.01 yen and the dollar turned positive, up 0.3 percent at 112.27 yen.

The euro fell 0.16 percent against the dollar to $1.1221. The dollar was up 0.33 percent to 95.606 against a basket of major currencies.

Oil prices also steadied after the initial rush to safer assets, with U.S. crude settling down 0.17 percent to $41.45 a barrel while Brent rebounded from a low of $40.97 to settle up 0.6 percent at $41.79.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Dan Grebler)

Obama intervened over crumbling Mosul dam as U.S. concern grew

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On Jan. 21, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iraq’s prime minister in Davos, Switzerland, and handed him a personal note from President Barack Obama pleading for urgent action.

Obama’s confidential message to Haider al-Abadi, which was confirmed to Reuters by two U.S. officials and has not been previously reported, was not about Islamic State or Iraq’s sectarian divide. It was about a potential catastrophe posed by the dire state of the country’s largest dam, whose collapse could unleash a flood killing tens of thousands of people and trigger an environmental disaster.

The president’s personal intervention indicates how the fragile Mosul Dam has moved to the forefront of U.S. concerns over Iraq, reflecting fears its failure would also undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize Abadi’s government and complicate the war against Islamic State.

It also reflected growing frustration. The U.S. government felt Baghdad was failing to take the threat seriously enough, according to interviews with officials at the State Department, Pentagon, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies.

“They dragged their feet on this,” said a U.S. official, who like the other sources declined to be identified.

The Iraqi government declined official comment on those assertions and on the Obama letter.

A U.S. government briefing paper released in late February says that the 500,000 to 1.47 million Iraqis living in the highest-risk areas along the Tigris River “probably would not survive” the flood’s impact unless they evacuated. Swept hundreds of miles along in the waters would be unexploded ordnance, chemicals, bodies and buildings.

“Governance and rule of law (would be) disrupted by widespread human, material, economic, and environmental losses,” says the paper.

U.S. officials would not disclose the precise contents of Obama’s letter.

Its impact on Iraq’s government could not be confirmed. But 11 days after it was delivered, Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Muhsin al-Shammari’s own political party removed him from responsibility over the dam, according to public statements. The water minister has publicly downplayed the threat posed by the dam.

U.S. relations with al-Shammari, an ally of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had become so bad that when U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones came to meetings, the minister would walk out, said an Iraqi government source briefed on Mosul Dam planning.

A U.S. embassy official in Baghdad confirmed that al-Shammari would not attend meetings with Jones. In one instance, U.S. officials were told that al-Shammari sat in an adjoining room and listened to a meeting via an audio feed. But cooperation with Abadi has been smooth, the official said.

Al-Shammari has not commented publicly on those meetings. He has suggested that predictions about the dam are an excuse to send more foreign troops to the country.

On March 2, Iraq signed a $296 million contract with Italy’s Trevi Group to reinforce the dam in northern Iraq, which has needed that work since it was built in the early 1980s on veins of water-soluble gypsum. Italy has said it will send 450 troops to help protect the dam.

ALARMING STUDY

Obama’s decision to send the note was prompted in part by alarming U.S. intelligence reports and a new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that found that the dam is even more unstable than believed, U.S. officials said.

Paul Salem, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, said that if the dam fails, the ensuing chaos and damage could trigger the collapse of U.S. ally Abadi’s government and tarnish Obama’s international legacy.

Efforts to repair the dam — which lies about 30 miles northwest of the city of Mosul — have been handicapped by Iraq’s chaotic security situation; political divisions in Baghdad; years of previous warnings that did not come true; and a cultural divide, U.S. and Iraqi officials and analysts said.

U.S. officials said Abadi, who is also grappling with the war against Islamic State, political infighting and budget shortfalls caused by low oil prices, is now focused on the dam and overseeing efforts to repair it.

“We’ve gotten to a point where there’s no question (the Iraqis) are on board,” said a senior USAID official.

However, Trevi says it will take four months to prepare the work site. And the 2.2 mile-long hydroelectric dam faces its highest risk between April and June from rising water levels due to melting snow.

Grout to reinforce the dam must be trucked in from Turkey, officials said, because the previous factory is in Mosul, now controlled by Islamic State militants.

“SWISS CHEESE”

Some Iraqi officials said Washington is sounding loud alarms over the dam to absolve itself of responsibility. The United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003, could have sought a more permanent solution before its 2011 pullout of combat troops but merely kept the dam operating at minimum cost, they contend.

There is no sign that a breach of Mosul Dam is imminent.

But the structure was built on what the senior USAID official called “the geologic equivalent of Swiss cheese.”

The 45-foot high wall of water that would swamp Mosul city within four hours of a dam breach would be “roughly what hit Japan during the height of the tsunami” in 2011, he said.

Maintenance was suspended after Islamic State seized the dam for two weeks in August 2014, scattering workers and destroying equipment. Work has resumed in recent months but officials have said international expertise is needed to prevent collapse.

While the full U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report hasn’t been released, slides summarizing its conclusions and dated Jan. 30, were posted on the Iraqi parliament’s website last month.

“All information gathered in the last year indicates Mosul Dam is at a significantly higher risk of failure than originally understood and is at a higher risk of failure today than it was a year ago,” says one slide.

A senior Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this U.S. assessment helped drive the decision to finalize the contract with Trevi group after months of talks.

Richard Coffman, a University of Arkansas assistant professor of civil engineering, studied satellite radar imagery and found the dam was sinking by eight millimeters a year.

Resuming grout-pumping operations is only a temporary solution, he said. “There is a need for a long-term fix.”

(Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin and Maher CHmaytelli in Baghdad and Steve Scherer in Rome. Editing by Don Durfee and Stuart Grudgings)

Syrian government refuses to discuss Assad’s future

GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – The fate of President Bashar al-Assad will play no part in talks to end the Syrian war, the head of the government’s delegation said, leading the U.N. peace envoy to warn that lack of progress on the issue could threaten a fragile cessation of hostilities.

Damascus delegate Bashar Ja’afari said Assad’s future had “nothing to do” with the negotiations, which entered their second week on Monday, insisting that counter-terrorism efforts remained the priority for the government.

“The (terms of) reference of our talks do not give any indication whatsoever with regard to the issue of the President of the Syrian Arab Republic,” he said when asked about the willingness of the government delegation to engage in serious talks on political transition.

“This is something already excluded.”

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura – who describes Syria’s political transition as “the mother of all issues” – responded by saying the government delegation’s refusal to discuss it could lead to a deterioration of the situation on the ground.

“Everyone more or less agrees, the cessation of hostilities is still holding,” he said. “The same … more or less for the movement on humanitarian aid. But neither of them can be sustained if we don’t get progress on the political transition.”

The fragility of the three-week-old cessation, which was backed by the United States and Russia, was highlighted on Monday when Moscow said it had recorded six violations in the last 24 hours.

The Syrian opposition accused the government delegation of wasting time by refusing to discuss the future of Assad. “It is not possible to wait like this, while the regime delegation wastes time without achieving anything,” said Salim al-Muslat, spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee.

DESERT CITY

Arguments over Assad’s fate were a major cause of the failure of previous U.N. peace efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end a civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused a refugee crisis.

The five-year-old conflict between the government and insurgents has also allowed Islamic State to take advantage of the chaos and take control of areas in the east of the country.

Fighters from the jihadist group – which is excluded from the ceasefire deal – killed 26 Syrian soldiers on Monday west of Palmyra, a monitoring group said, after days of advances by government forces backed by Syrian and Russian air cover.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the Syrian army would soon recapture Palmyra from Islamic State, which has held the desert city for nearly a year.

Palmyra has both symbolic and military value as the site of ancient Roman-era ruins – mostly destroyed by Islamic State – and because of its location on a highway linking mainly government-held western Syria to Islamic State’s eastern stronghold.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting took place about 4 km (2 miles) west of Palmyra.

It was not possible to independently verify the death toll. Syria’s state news agency SANA said the army and allied forces, backed by the Syrian air force, carried out “concentrated operations” against Islamic State around Palmyra and the Islamic State-held town of al-Qaryatayn, about 100 km further west.

After more than five months of air strikes in support of Assad, which turned the course of the civil war in the government’s favour, Putin announced the withdrawal last week of most Russian forces. But Russian planes have continued to support army operations near Palmyra, according to the Observatory and regional media.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, Stephanie Nebehay and Ali Abdelatti; Writing by Pravin Char; editing by John Stonestreet)

Captured Paris attacks suspect ‘worth weight in gold’ to police, lawyer says

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The only suspected participant in Nov. 13 Paris attacks to be captured alive has been cooperating with police investigators and is “worth his weight in gold”, his lawyer said on Monday.

Belgium’s Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following the capture of 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam in a flat in Brussels on Friday.

“We know that stopping one cell can …push others into action. We are aware of it in this case,” he told public radio.

French investigator Francois Molins told a news conference in Paris on Saturday Abdeslam had admitted to investigators he had wanted to blow himself up along with others at the Stade de France on the night of the attack claimed by Islamic State; but he later backed out.

Abdeslam’s lawyer Sven Mary said he would sue Molins for making the comment public, calling it a violation of judicial confidentiality.

Mary said Abdeslam was now fully cooperating with investigators.

“I think that Salah Abdeslam is of prime importance for this investigation. I would even say he is worth his weight in gold. He is collaborating. He is communicating. He is not maintaining his right to remain silent,” Mary told Belgian public broadcaster RTBF.

MORE OPERATIONS PLANNED?

As the only suspected participant or planner of the Paris attack in police custody, Abdeslam would be seen by investigators as a possible major source of information on others involved, in support networks, finance and links with Islamic State in Syria. There would also be urgent interest in finding out what further attacks might be planned.

Belgian prosecutors said in a statement they were looking for Najim Laachraoui, 25, using the false name of Soufiane Kayal. His DNA had been found in houses in Belgium used by the Paris attackers.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said on Sunday that Abdeslam may have been plotting more operations drawing on a weapons discovered in the Forest district of Brussels and a network of associates.

Jambon said he could not confirm that, but it was a possibility.

“After 18 months of dealing with this terrorist issue, I have learned that when the terrorists and weapons are in the same place, and that’s what we saw in Forest, we are close to an attack. I’m not saying it is evidence. But yes, there are indications,” he said.

Reynders said Belgium and France had so far found around 30 people involved in the gun and bomb attacks on bars, a sports stadium and a concert hall in the French capital.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski and Barbara Lewis; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Erdogan says Turkey battling ‘terrorist wave’ after Istanbul bombing

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday Turkey would use all its military and intelligence might to battle “one of the biggest and bloodiest terrorist waves in its history”, after a suicide bomber killed three Israelis and an Iranian in Istanbul.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon described Turkey as “awash in terrorism”. Turkey’s main opposition party blamed what it called the government’s “adventure-seeking policies” in the Middle East for turmoil washing across Syria’s borders.

Saturday’s attack on Istiklal Street, a long pedestrian avenue lined with international stores and foreign consulates, was the fourth suicide bombing in Turkey this year. Two in Istanbul have been blamed on Islamic State, while the two others in the capital Ankara have been claimed by Kurdish militants.

The attacks have raised questions at home and among NATO allies as to whether its security services are overstretched as they fight on two fronts.

“Turkey has recently been facing one of the biggest and bloodiest terrorist waves in its history … Our state is fighting terrorist organizations and the forces behind them with everything at its disposal – its soldiers, police, village guards and its intelligence,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul.

But his critics, including privately some of Turkey’s allies, argue that Erdogan’s focus on battling Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the largely Kurdish southeast – a campaign he has repeatedly vowed will continue – comes at the expense of its fight against Islamic State.

Erdogan said the PKK and other groups were working with Islamic State and had turned on Turkey because they had failed to achieve their aims elsewhere in the region. He accused Europe of “two-faced behavior” for allowing PKK sympathizers to set up a tent near an EU-Turkey summit in Brussels last week.

Turkey has seen phases of civil disorder, a military coup in 1960, and left-right street clashes in the 1970s and 1980s that triggered two further army interventions. The Kurdish conflict has also caused widespread bloodshed, but rarely has a Turkish government faced such serious domestic conflicts simultaneously.

Turkey is part of a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but is also fighting PKK separatists in its southeast, where it sees an upsurge in violence since July as fueled by the territorial gains of a Kurdish militia in Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Yaalon said the roots of the violence lay in radical Islam he said was “flooding the world”.

“What must be ensured is that terrorism is not initiated, like the way Hamas initiates terrorism against us, from Turkey, from Istanbul,” he said in a speech, in a swipe at Ankara’s support for the Palestinian Islamist militant group, which Israel sees an obstacle to repairing bilateral ties.

MANHUNT

Government officials deny suggestions that Turkey, long seen by Washington as a model for Islamic democracy but now facing Western criticism over its human rights policies, is not focused on fighting Islamic State.

But the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has criticized what it sees as a pro-Sunni sectarian meddling in Syria, blamed Turkish foreign policy.

“What we are going through now is the result of the (ruling) AK Party’s unstable, contradictory, utopian, adventure-seeking policies in the Middle East,” CHP group deputy chairman Engin Altay told a press conference in parliament.

At least half a dozen newspapers from across the political spectrum carried head-and-shoulders pictures of three more suspected Islamic State members on Monday, saying they had been instructed to carry out further attacks in crowded areas.

“All provincial police units have taken action to try to capture the three terrorists suspected of being Islamic State members planning sensational attacks,” the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala on Sunday identified the Istanbul bomber as a Mehmet Ozturk, born in 1992 and from the southern province of Gaziantep near the Syrian border. Five people had been detained in connection with the blast.

ISRAELIS TARGETED?

Israel has confirmed that three of its citizens died. Two held dual citizenship with the United States. An Iranian was also killed, Turkish officials have said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is trying to determine whether its citizens were deliberately targeted. Eleven of the 36 wounded were Israelis.

Turkey’s Haberturk newspaper said police had been examining CCTV footage and that it appeared the suicide bomber had followed the group of Israeli tourists for several kilometers from their hotel, then waiting outside the restaurant where they ate breakfast before blowing himself up as they emerged.

Israeli media gave details of those who died.

Yonathan Suher, a father of two, had traveled to Istanbul to celebrate his 40th birthday with his wife, who was seriously wounded. Kindergarten teacher Simcha Damari, 60, and Avi Goldman, 63, who worked as a tour guide in Israel, both left behind several grandchildren, Israeli media said.

(Additional reporting by Daren Butler in Istanbul, Gulsen Solaker in Ankara, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)

New York state man gets longest-ever sentence for supporting Islamic State

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A New York state resident was sentenced on Thursday to 22-1/2 years in prison for trying to recruit fighters to join Islamic State in Syria – the longest prison term handed out yet to an American convicted of supporting the militant group.

Mufid Elfgeeh, 32, of Rochester, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford of the Western District of New York. The district’s U.S. attorney, William Hochul, called Elfgeeh “one of the first ISIL recruiters ever captured,” using another acronym for the militant group.

A North Carolina federal judge last May issued the second-longest sentence for Islamic State-related activity – 20 years and three months in prison – to Donald Ray Morgan, 44, for trying to provide material support to Islamic State, and for unlawfully possessing a firearm.

A Reuters analysis, confirmed by the U.S. Department of Justice, found they were the two stiffest such sentences yet issued.

Convictions for Islamic State-related activity by Americans have become more frequent in recent months as more than 80 such cases brought by U.S. prosecutors since 2013 work their way through federal courts.

An Arizona man was convicted by a jury on Thursday of conspiring to support Islamic State and other terrorism-related charges, while two men in unrelated cases in Mississippi and Ohio pleaded guilty on Friday and Wednesday to trying to join or convince others to join Islamic State. They have not yet been sentenced.

Although Elfgeeh pleaded guilty in December only to trying to recruit two individuals to join Islamic State, he was also originally charged with trying to kill U.S. service members and unlawfully possessing firearms and silencers.

Beginning in 2013, the FBI paid two informants to help investigate Elfgeeh, according to court records. The informants recorded conversations in which Elfgeeh talked about wanting to kill members of the U.S. military and Shi’a Muslims in New York. One of the informants eventually sold Elfgeeh firearms and ammunition.

Elfgeeh tried to send the two individuals to Syria to fight on behalf of Islamic State, buying them a laptop computer, a high-definition camera, an expedited passport and other travel documents, according to his plea agreement.

He used Facebook and WhatsApp to activate a network of Islamic State sympathizers in Turkey, Syria and Yemen who could facilitate their trip, the plea agreement said.

During the same months, Elfgeeh also helped the alleged commander of a Syrian rebel battalion contact Islamic State leadership so that the battalion could join the larger group, prosecutors said.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Arizona man found guilty in ‘Draw Mohammed’ event shooting

PHOENIX (Reuters) – An Arizona man was found guilty on Thursday of plotting with others to attack a “Draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in Texas last year and providing material support to the Islamic State group, prosecutors said.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, 44, was convicted on all five charges against him by a federal jury in U.S. District Court in Phoenix stemming from the May 3 attack in the Dallas suburb of Garland that left his two alleged associates dead in a shoot-out with police.

The case against Kareem, also known as Decarus Thomas, was the first Islamic State-related prosecution to reach trial of the dozens brought by the federal government across the nation. It is the second jury verdict in such a case, as U.S. Air Force veteran Tairod Pugh was convicted earlier this month in New York.

“This verdict sends a strong message to those who support terrorists,” acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix division, Justin Tolomeo, said in a statement.

Kareem’s attorney could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday, but Kareem maintained his innocence and denied involvement in the attacks when he took the stand for two days in the federal trial.

Kareem’s roommates, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, of Phoenix were killed by Garland police after they opened fire with assault rifles outside the May 3 cartoon drawing event.

The contest was intended to satirize Islam’s Prophet Mohammed. It came months after gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in what was said to be revenge for its cartoons depicting Mohammed.

Such portrayals are considered offensive by Muslims. None of the approximately 150 people attending the event in Garland in May were hurt.

The original indictment said Kareem supplied the two gunmen with arms and helped them prepare for the attack. He was later charged with showing support for the Islamic State militant group in social media posts, researching travel to the Middle East to train with terrorists and seeking to make explosives that could be used during last year’s Super Bowl in Arizona, the most-watched U.S. sporting event annually.

Prosecutors said Kareem could face a potential sentence of at least 45 years in prison.

(Reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix; Editing by Curtis Skinner and Sandra Maler)

Record number of children arrested for terrorism offenses in UK

LONDON (Reuters) – British police arrested a record number of children for terrorism offenses last year and the number of women detained also soared, official figures showed on Thursday.

While the total number of terrorism-related arrests fell, 16 children aged under 18 were held in 2015, up from 10 the year before and the highest number ever recorded, according to figures from the Home Office (interior ministry).

Meanwhile 45 women were detained on suspicion of terrorism crimes – a 15 percent increase on the previous year – and a continuation of a recent upward trend.

In total, there were 280 terrorism-related arrests, a decrease of 3 percent from 2015 when there were 289.

“The overall fall in terrorism-related arrests was driven by a fall in the number of arrests for domestic terrorism, which decreased to 15 in the year ending December 2015 compared with 28 in the previous year,” the Home Office said.

Arrests for international-related terrorism increased by three percent.

Britain is on its second-highest threat level, meaning an attack is considered highly likely.

Earlier this month, Britain’s most senior anti-terrorism officer said Islamic State fighters wanted to carry out “enormous and spectacular” attacks against Britain and the Western lifestyle in general in repeats of last November’s Paris attacks which left 130 people dead.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)

Germany searches home of two Syrians suspected of planning attack

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have raided the home of two Syrian brothers with links to the militant group Islamic State (IS), suspecting that they were preparing an attack, prosecutors in Frankfurt said on Thursday.

Police confiscated an air pistol, electronic storage devices, mobile phones and $16,000 in cash but did not arrest the brothers, 21 and 30 years old.

Prosecutors did not give more information on the exact nature of the suspected crime, which they called a “serious act of violent subversion”.

The older brother had entered Germany in February 2015 with a forged passport obtained by IS, a crime for which he was sentenced and fined last year.

Prosecutors said that in social media postings he had promoted the militant group, threatened German authorities and justified last November’s attacks in Paris.

The younger brother published a picture of himself on social media that showed him sitting in a “luxury car belonging to his brother” sporting a pistol, the prosecutor’s office said.

Germany has been on alert since militants with links to Islamic State killed 130 people in Paris in November.

The anxieties have been fueled by the arrival of over 1 million migrants in Germany last year, many of them fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East and beyond.

Last month, the government said that the whereabouts of more than 140,000 people registered in 2015 were unknown.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon)

U.S. says Islamic State committed genocide against Christians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ite Muslims, the United States said on Thursday, a finding U.S. officials hope will bring more resources to help the groups even though it does not change U.S. military strategy or legal obligations.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shi’ite Muslims,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters, referring to the group by an Arabic acronym. “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions.”

Republicans, who control the U.S. Congress, had pressured the Democratic White House to call the militants’ atrocities in Iraq and Syria genocide and the House of Representatives on Monday passed a nonbinding resolution 393-0 labeling them as such.

U.S. officials hope the determination will help them win political and budget support from Congress and other nations to help the targeted groups return home if and when Islamic State-controlled areas such as the Iraqi city of Mosul are liberated.

While the genocide finding may make it easier for Washington to argue for greater action against the group, U.S. officials said it does not create a U.S. legal obligation to do more, and would not change U.S. military strategy toward the militants.

On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “Acknowledging that genocide or crimes against humanity have taken place in another country would not necessarily result in any particular legal obligation for the United States.”

U.S. President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group starting in 2014 but has made clear he wishes to avoid any large commitment of U.S. ground troops.

Unlike in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2004, where the United States found that genocide had taken place but did not use military force to stop it, U.S. officials noted they began air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in August 2014 in part to save the Yazidi minority group from targeted attack.

“We didn’t act in Rwanda. We looked back and regretted it. We didn’t act militarily in Darfur. In this case within … days of the Yazidis being targeted by Daesh in Iraq, American planes were in the air trying to help them,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘WE’VE DONE AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT’

Islamic State militants have swept through Iraq and Syria in recent years, seizing swathes of territory with an eye toward establishing jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.

The group’s videos depict the violent deaths of people who stand in its way. Opponents have been beheaded, shot dead, blown up with fuses attached to their necks and drowned in cages in swimming pools, with underwater cameras capturing their agony.

Kerry argued the United States has done much to fight the group since 2014, but did not directly answer a question on why it had not done more to prevent genocide.

“We’re very confident we’ve done an enormous amount,” he told reporters as he walked down a hall at the State Department.

“The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians. Yazidis because they are Yazidis. Shi’ites because they are Shi’ites,” Kerry said earlier, and accused Islamic State of crimes against humanity and of ethnic cleansing.

Islamic State militants have exploited the five-year civil war in Syria to seize areas in that country and in neighboring Iraq, though U.S. officials say their air strikes have markedly reduced the territory the group controls.

On-again, off-again peace talks got under way this week in Geneva in an effort to end the civil war, in which at least 250,000 people have died and millions have fled their homes. A fragile “cessation of hostilities” has reduced, but not ended, the violence over the last two weeks.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish)