Tag Archives: Islamic State

Trauma of Islamic State rule follows Iraqi women out of Mosul

displaced woman rescued from ISIS

By Stephen Kalin

KHAZIR, Iraq (Reuters) – One wrong word to an Islamic State fighter in Mosul last year was all it took to set in motion a harrowing chain of events for an Iraqi woman who became so traumatized that she trembled in fear even after escaping the group’s control.

The widowed mother was being vetted to receive a pension from the ultra-hardline Islamists a few months after they seized the northern city in 2014 and turned it into the Iraqi capital of their self-styled caliphate.

“I made the mistake of telling them my husband had been a victim of terrorism,” she said in an interview on Tuesday at a government-run camp in Khazir, east of Mosul. “One of them hit me and broke my teeth. Then they took me to a house and held me for three days.”

The jihadists locked her up in a filthy room with rats and bugs. She was blindfolded and her arms and legs were bound by chains as one of the men – or perhaps several, she couldn’t tell – raped her over and over again, she said.

Islamic State, which is putting up fierce resistance to a U.S.-backed offensive to retake Mosul, the group’s last major stronghold in Iraq, has been accused of massacre, enslavement and rape since it swept across large swathes of the country’s north and west in 2014.

There was no way of verifying her story, but it reflected others’ experiences coming to light as civilians from the most populous city ever controlled by the jihadists emerge from their grip and grapple with 2-1/2 years of suffering.

A 13-year-old girl who also spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said her father had married her to a neighbor four years her senior who turned out to be with Islamic State.

The slender adolescent now clutching a pink sequined purse said he had threatened to kill her and permitted his brothers to sexually assault her.

After escaping Mosul a few weeks ago, she learned he had made it to a nearby camp and informed the authorities. They detained him, but the pair remain married.

The 37-year-old widow fled last month to Khazir camp, where she receives counseling from UNFPA, a United Nations agency focused on gender-based violence. She asked that her name be withheld for fear of retribution and donned a face veil that revealed only her eyes.

When Islamic State released her after the assault, the diminutive, round-faced woman returned home thinking her nightmare was over.

She sent her two younger children – now 9 and 11 – to stay with relatives in the nearby Kurdish city of Erbil and planned to join them as soon as she could save enough money to smuggle herself and her eldest son.

But a few weeks later she discovered she was pregnant with the child of one of her Islamic State tormentors. In addition to the trauma of being raped, she feared the stigma in Iraq’s conservative society of an unmarried woman giving birth. Within two months she had rushed into marriage with a man who had agreed to adopt the child as his own.

“DIE OF HUNGER OR GET MARRIED”

“They were forcing widows to get married. This was one of their rules: either die of hunger or get married,” said the woman, who occasionally wept and fidgeted with her hands underneath a loose-fitting garment.

Her new husband, though, also had a troubled past. An engineering student in his last year of university, he had been sentenced to death in connection with a crime of honor before Islamic State seized Mosul. In jail, he befriended jihadists who helped him escape when the group routed government forces in 2014.

Soon after the pair married, Islamic State gave the man an ultimatum: fight with us or we kill you. He yielded, and his new wife found herself back in the militants’ clutches.

When her family living outside Mosul learned that she was now married to an Islamic State member, they severed all connections with her. Her late husband’s brother took custody of her two young children and moved them to Baghdad, vowing never to let her see them again.

When Iraqi forces reached her neighborhood last month, she said, they detained her new husband to investigate his jihadist ties.

She took her eldest son with her to the camp but left the baby, now just over a year old, with her new husband’s second wife who remains in Mosul. His fate and that of hundreds or perhaps thousands of other children born to the jihadists remains unclear as the group loses much of its territory and its bid for statehood.

“They think this is the son of their father, they don’t know the truth,” the mother said of the second wife’s family. “The boy doesn’t look like me.”

She has resolved never to return to Mosul, even if Islamic State is eliminated. “I want to go somewhere far away where nobody knows me.”

German police hunt Tunisian asylum-seeker over Christmas market attack

Candles burn at a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, Germany, December 20, 2016, to commemorate the 12 victims of a truck that ploughed into the crowded market.

By Paul Carrel and Matthias Inverardi

BERLIN/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) – German police are looking for an asylum-seeker from Tunisia after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of a truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people, officials and security sources said on Wednesday.

Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the man appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected.

He seemed to have used different names and had been identified by security agencies as being in contact with an Islamist network. The man had mainly lived in Berlin since February, but was recently in NRW, Jaeger said.

The man had been considered a potential threat by security authorities since November. After being turned down for asylum, he should have been deported but could not be returned to Tunisia because his documents were missing, added Jaeger.

The new details added to a growing list of questions about whether security authorities missed opportunities to prevent the attack, in which a 25-tonne truck mowed down a crowd of shoppers and smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

Christmas markets have been a known potential target for Islamist militants since at least 2000, when authorities thwarted a plot to attack one in Strasbourg, France. And the modus operandi in Berlin was identical to that of a Bastille Day attack in the French city of Nice in July, when a Tunisian-born man rammed a lorry through a seaside crowd and killed 86 people.

Security sources said the ID found by the Berlin investigators was in the name of Anis A., born in the southern Tunisian city of Tataouine in 1992. By convention, suspects in Germany are identified by the first name and initial.

A spokesperson for Tunisia’s foreign ministry said it was trying to verify that information.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said a Europe-wide manhunt for the suspect had been underway since midnight.

The Rheinische Post newspaper said police had begun searching a shelter for migrants in western Germany where the man was believed to have lived.

SYMBOLIC TARGET

The pre-Christmas carnage at a symbolic Berlin site – under the ruined spire of a church bombed in World War Two – has shocked Germans and prompted security reviews across Europe, already on high alert after attacks this year in Belgium and France.

The possible – though unproven – involvement of a migrant or refugee has revived a bitter debate about security and immigration, with Chancellor Angela Merkel facing calls to clamp down after allowing more than a million newcomers into Germany in the past two years.

Merkel, who will run for a fourth term next year, has said it would be particularly repugnant if a refugee seeking protection in Germany was the perpetrator.

Police initially arrested a Pakistani asylum-seeker near the scene, but released him without charge on Tuesday. Authorities have warned that the attacker is on the run and may be armed. It is not clear if the perpetrator was acting alone or with others.

The Polish driver of the hijacked truck was found shot dead in the cabin of the vehicle. Bild newspaper reported that he was alive until the attack took place.

It quoted an investigator as saying there must have been a struggle with the attacker, who may have been injured.

ISLAMIC STATE CLAIM

Islamic State has claimed responsibility, as it did for the Nice attack.

The Passauer Neue Presse newspaper quoted the head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states, Klaus Bouillon, as saying tougher security measures were needed.

“We want to raise the police presence and strengthen the protection of Christmas markets. We will have more patrols. Officers will have machine guns. We want to make access to markets more difficult, with vehicles parked across them,” Bouillon told the paper.

Some politicians have blamed Merkel’s open-door migrant policy for making such attacks more likely. The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained support in the last two years as the chancellor’s popularity has waned, said on Tuesday that Germany is no longer safe.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann told German radio there was a higher risk of Islamist attacks because of the influx of migrants in the past two years, many of whom have fled conflicts in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The task of tracking the suspects and the movements of the truck may be complicated by the relative scarcity of security cameras in public places in Germany, compared with similar countries such as Britain.

The German cabinet on Wednesday approved a draft law to broaden video surveillance in public and commercial areas, a move agreed by political parties last month after a spate of violent attacks and sexual assaults on women.

State surveillance is a sensitive issue in Germany because of extensive snooping by the Stasi secret police in Communist East Germany and by the Gestapo in the Nazi era.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in Berlin and Mohamed Argouby in Tunis; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Islamic State claims responsibility for shootout at Jordanian castle

Jordanian policemen stand guard in the vicinity of Kerak Castle where armed gunmen carried out an attack, in the city of Karak, Jordan.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Islamic State militants claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a shootout at a Crusader castle in the southern Jordanian city of Karak in which at least nine people including a Canadian tourist were killed.

An Islamic State statement said four IS fighters undertook the operation on Sunday that ended in their deaths. Jordanian officials have not said who they suspect in the attack though security sources said the perpetrators were Jordanian nationals.

Jordanian police said late on Sunday that they had killed four “terrorist outlaws” after flushing them out of the castle where they were holed up after an exchange of fire that lasted several hours. Security forces were able to release around 10 tourists unharmed. At least 30 people were taken to hospital.

Interior Minister Salamah Hamad said on Monday at least five suicide belts were found, together with an ammunition cache, automatic weapons and explosives in a hideout in a house in the desert town of Qatranah, 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Karak.

The gunmen had fled to Karak after an exchange of fire with the police, Hamad said. Based on the quantities of explosives and weapons, “I don’t think the target was just Karak castle, it’s more,” he added. He would not elaborate, saying disclosing details at this stage could imperil national security.

Jordan has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011, but maintains a high level of vigilance.

However, it is among the few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants holding territory in Syria and Iraq. Many Jordanians oppose their country’s involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.

Last November three U.S. military trainers were shot dead when their car was fired on by a Jordanian army member at the gate of a military base. Washington disputed the official Jordanian version that they were shot at for failing to stop, and said it did not rule out political motives.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. offers $25 million reward for information on Islamic State leader

A man purported to be the reclusive leader of the militant Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi making what would have been his first public appearance, at a mosque in the centre of Iraq's second city, Mosul, according to a video recording posted on the Internet on July 5, 2014, in this still image taken from video.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Friday more than doubled its previous reward for information on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, offering $25 million for information that would help locate, arrest or convict the head of the jihadist group.

The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program previously offered $10 million for information on Baghdadi, announced in October 2011. The increase was announced in a statement on Friday.

Baghdadi, an Iraqi whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, declared himself the caliph of a huge swath of Iraq and Syria two years ago.

His exact location is not clear. Reports have said he may be in the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, Iraq, or in Islamic State-held territory to the west of the city, close to the border with Syria.

Kurdish officials believe that growing pressure resulting from a coalition military assault on Mosul is causing Baghdadi and his top lieutenants to move around and try to hide themselves.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati, editing by G Crosse)

Traces of explosives found in Egyptair crash: investigators

Part of a plane chair among recovered debris of the EgyptAir jet that crashed in the Mediterranean Sea is seen in this handout image

By Lin Noueihed and Tim Hepher

CAIRO/PARIS (Reuters) – Egyptian investigators said on Thursday traces of explosives had been found on the remains of victims of an Egyptair flight that crashed en route from Paris to Cairo, but French officials warned against drawing conclusions on the cause of the crash.

Flight MS 804 plunged into one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, killing all 66 people on board.

Egypt’s investigation committee issued a statement saying the coroner had found traces of explosives on the remains of some victims. It gave no more details but said its findings were sent to prosecutors investigating foul play.

“The technical investigation committee … places itself and its expertise at the disposal of prosecutors,” it said.

A judicial source said the prosecution had not received details about the explosives traces but would include the coroner’s findings in its inquiries.

An Egyptian source familiar with the matter said Egypt had informed France months ago about its findings but French investigators had requested more time to study them.

“That is why it took so long to make an announcement,” the source said, declining to be named as the investigation is continuing.

Paris newspaper Le Figaro reported in September that French investigators had seen traces of TNT on the plane’s debris but were prevented from further examining it. Egyptian officials denied at the time obstructing French inquiries.

France has hinted at its frustration at the pace of the investigation but has stopped short of openly criticising Cairo, with which it enjoys broadly positive relations and which has ordered French Rafale fighter jets.

SMOKE

France’s foreign ministry said the causes were still being investigated and appeared to hint that it had been kept at arm’s length.

“France, like it has been from the beginning of this tragic accident, remains at the disposal of the relevant Egyptian authorities to contribute to this investigation, including with the means of its experts,” it said.

In a rare statement on an ongoing foreign investigation, France’s BEA air crash investigation agency said on Thursday no conclusions could be drawn on what might have caused the crash.

“In the absence of detailed information on the conditions and ways in which samples were taken leading to the detection of traces of explosives, the BEA considers that it is not possible at this stage to draw conclusions on the origin of the accident,” a spokeswoman said.

The BEA is accredited to the Egyptian-led investigation because the Airbus aircraft was designed and built in France.

Two Western sources briefed on the investigation expressed reservations about the explosives findings and said a technical cause remained the most likely. The pattern of wreckage also suggested the plane hit the sea intact at high speed, they said.

One of the sources said the traces of explosives reportedly found appeared to be identical to samples previously held in stock, whereas there would usually be tiny forensic differences. Neither source agreed to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Airbus declined comment.

Audio from the flight recorder mentions a fire on board the plane in its final moments and analysis of the flight data recorder showed smoke in the lavatory and avionics bay.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened a manslaughter investigation in June but said it was not looking into terrorism as a possible cause at that stage.

No group has claimed responsibility for the crash.

In October 2015, a bomb brought down a Metrojet plane carrying Russian holidaymakers home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it smuggled aboard explosives in a soft drink can.

(Additional reporting by Asma Alsharif, Haitham Ahmed in Cairo and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Larry King and Andrew Hay)

U.S. may target weapons seized by Islamic State in Palmyra

Islamic State fighters search weapon boxes in a Russian base in what is said to be Palmyra,

By Phil Stewart and David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of U.S. forces fighting Islamic State said on Wednesday the United States may target weapons seized by the group when it captured the Syrian city of Palmyra, adding the equipment posed a danger to the U.S.-led coalition in the region.

Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend told a Pentagon video briefing that the weapons seized by Islamic State likely included armored vehicles, guns and possibly air defense equipment or other heavy weaponry.

He hoped Russia or Syria would quickly retake Palmyra and neutralize the threat, but cautioned the United States would stand ready to strike if needed, including if the looted weapons started moving out of the city.

“Basically anything they seized poses a threat to the coalition but we can manage those threats and we will,” Townsend said. “I anticipate that we’ll have opportunities to strike that equipment and kill the ISIL that’s operating it soon.”

Still, he cautioned that Russia or Syria would have a far better sense of who was on the ground and would be in a better position to react quickly.

“We can’t tell one side from the other. So we can’t tell if the truck and the armored vehicle is being operated by a regime trooper, a Russian trooper or ISIL fighter,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

Islamic State recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra on Sunday despite dozens of Russian air strikes to push back the militants, exposing the limitations of the Russian backing that has turned the tide of the conflict in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s favor.

The focus of Syria’s overstretched army on defeating insurgents in their last urban stronghold of Aleppo may have diverted resources needed to defend the city, where Moscow in recent months beefed up its defenses.

Palmyra, with its Roman-era city and spectacular ruins, had been recaptured from the militants last March, in what was hailed as a major victory for the government and the biggest reversal for Islamic State in Syria since Russia’s intervention.

‘FLEETING VICTORY’

“(They) took their eye off the ball there, the enemy sensed weakness and struck and gained a victory that I think will probably be fleeting,” Townsend said.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that if it were true the militants seized an anti-aircraft missile system, the threat from Islamic State “is worse because of the failed strategy of the Syrians and the Russians.”

By taking full control of Aleppo, Assad has proved the power of his military coalition and dealt a crushing blow to rebel hopes of ousting Assad after revolting against him during the 2011 Arab uprisings.

Rebels have been supported by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but the support they have enjoyed has fallen far short of the direct military backing given to Assad by Russia and Iran.

Townsend said he expected rebels who lost Aleppo would take their fight elsewhere in Syria but that it was unlikely to significantly affect the U.S.-backed effort against Islamic State – including a bid to capture the group’s stronghold of Raqqa, Syria.

“Our estimate is they’ll probably go somewhere else that is more important to them, and I won’t care to comment on where we think that might be,” he said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Peter Cooney)

U.S. strike kills Islamic State militants linked to Paris attacks

A man pays his respects during a gathering at the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, November 13, 2016, after ceremonies held for the victims of last year's Paris attacks which targeted the Bataclan concert hall as well as a series of bars and killed 130 people.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. drone strike in Syria last week killed two Islamic State leaders linked to the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people as well as a third militant convicted in absentia in Belgium for a disrupted plot, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

The U.S. military said the strike took place on Dec. 4 in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s defacto capital in Syria.

“They were working together to plot and facilitate attacks on Western targets at the time of the strike,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told reporters.

The Pentagon named two of the militants as Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou and said both men were involved with facilitating the 2015 machinegun and suicide bomb attacks on the Bataclan music hall, Paris bars and restaurants, and the Stade de France soccer stadium.

The third man killed, Walid Hamman, was a suicide attack planner and French national who was convicted in absentia in Belgium for a plot disrupted in 2015, Davis told reporters.

The three men were killed when a drone aircraft fired on them as they were driving in a car together, Davis said.

Islamic State, which has controlled parts of Iraq and Syria in recent years, has lost territory this year to local forces in those countries supported by a U.S.-led coalition of air strikes and advisers. Islamic State sympathizers around the world have carried out other shootings and bombings of civilians.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Will Dunham)

Iraqi police say ready to join assault on east Mosul

Members of the Iraqi Army fire towards Islamic State militant positions at the south of Mosul, Iraq.

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Several thousand Iraqi federal police are ready to join the assault against Islamic State in east Mosul, a spokesman said on Monday, reinforcing troops who have faced weeks of fierce counter-attacks from the militants.

The extra forces are being deployed as the grueling U.S.-backed campaign to crush Islamic State in its Iraqi stronghold enters its ninth week. Elite army troops have retaken a quarter of the city, but their advance has been slow and punishing.

The federal police units, around 4,000 strong, have been moved to southeast of the city, near an area where an army tank division last week made the deepest incursion into Mosul so far, briefly seizing a hospital used as a base by the militants.

The troops were forced to pull back from the Salam hospital, less than a mile (about 1 km) from the Tigris river which runs through the center of Mosul, when they were attacked by suicide car bombs, mortar volleys and machine gun fire.

A spokesman for Iraq’s federal police commander, Lieutenant-General Raed Shakir Jawdat, said the three brigades from the police Fifth Division were ready to move in, although he suggested they might not go into action immediately.

They are currently near Qaraqosh, about 15 km (10 miles) from the southeast edge of the city and are “fully prepared now to start the attack to control the eastern side of Mosul,” the spokesman said.

However he said they were waiting for advances elsewhere on the eastern front, where elite Counter Terrorism Services (CTS) have made steady street-by-street progress, unlike last week’s dramatic push by the armored division towards the hospital.

“We are waiting for orders from the supreme commanders to start the offensive to defeat Daesh (Islamic State) and clear the eastern part (of Mosul),” he said.

The CTS forces said on Sunday they had captured another district of east Mosul, the al-Nour neighborhood.

Accounts from Mosul are difficult to confirm since authorities have increasingly restricted international media access to the battlefronts and areas retaken from Islamic State in and around the city.

Iraqi fighters from Hashid Shaabi take part in a training at Makhmur camp in Iraq

Iraqi fighters from Hashid Shaabi take part in a training at Makhmur camp in Iraq December 11, 2016. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

POLICE DIVERTED FROM SOUTHWEST

The police and CTS troops are part of a 100,000-strong Iraqi alliance which launched the campaign to retake Mosul on Oct. 17. It includes soldiers, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shi’ite Popular Mobilization forces, and is backed by a U.S.-led international coalition.

Defeating Islamic State in Mosul, the biggest city it controls in Iraq or Syria, would be a crushing blow to the self-styled caliphate it declared in large parts of both countries two years ago, and might see it revert to more covert militant operations in Iraq.

Iraqi commanders say progress has been slowed by the fierce defence waged by the jihadists, who they say have used a network of tunnels under the eastern half of the city and exploited more than 1 million civilians as human shields.

The fight in crowded residential areas has also restricted the use of heavy weapons and air strikes from the U.S.-led coalition, the military says.

For weeks, commanders have also talked about opening a new front in southwest Mosul to stretch Islamic State defences. But the despatch of the units to the southeast may delay that plan.

The forces in Qaraqosh had been due to join other police units who have reached within 3 or 4 km (2 or 3 miles) of the airport on Mosul’s southwestern edge, and were expected to open the new front inside the city on the west bank of the Tigris.

Nearly two months into the campaign, the United Nations says 91,000 people have been registered as displaced from Mosul and nearby towns and villages. That figure excludes thousands more forced as human shields back into Mosul by retreating militants.

Most people though have stayed put, and 1 million are likely to be still living in remaining Islamic State-held areas of the city. With the militants largely sealed off, civilians are enduring increasingly siege-like conditions, with shortages of fuel, food and water as winter sets in.

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Kurdistan Workers Party claim responsibility for Istanbul attack that killed 38

Wreaths, placed by representatives of foreign missions, are pictured at the scene of Saturday's blasts in Istanbul, Turkey

By David Dolan and Tuvan Gumrukcu

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An offshoot of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) claimed responsibility on Sunday for twin bombings that killed 38 people and wounded 155 outside an Istanbul soccer stadium, an attack for which the Turkish government vowed vengeance.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), which has claimed several other deadly attacks in Turkey this year, said in a statement on its website that it was behind Saturday night’s blasts, which shook a nation still trying to recover from a failed military coup and a number of bombings this year..

Saturday’s attacks took place near the Vodafone Arena, home to Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team, about two hours after a match at the stadium and appeared to target police officers. The first was a car bomb outside the stadium, followed within a minute by a suicide bomb attack in an adjacent park.

TAK, which has claimed responsibility for an Ankara bombing that killed 37, is an offshoot of the PKK, which has carried out a violent, three-decade insurgency, mainly in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast.

“What we must focus on is this terror burden. Our people should have no doubt we will continue our battle against terror until the end,” Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after meeting injured victims in an Istanbul hospital.

The daughter of police officer Hasim Usta who was killed in Saturday's blasts (C), prays during a funeral ceremony in

The daughter of police officer Hasim Usta who was killed in Saturday’s blasts (C), prays during a funeral ceremony in Istanbul, Turkey, December 12, 2016. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

‘WE WILL HAVE VENGEANCE’

Speaking at a funeral for five of the police officers at the Istanbul police headquarters, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said: “Sooner or later we will have our vengeance. This blood will not be left on the ground, no matter what the price, what the cost.”

Soylu also warned those who would offer support to the attackers on social media or elsewhere; comments aimed at pro-Kurdish politicians the government accuses of having links to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Europe and Turkey.

In recent months thousands of Kurdish politicians have been detained, including dozens of mayors and the leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), parliament’s second-biggest opposition party, accused of having links to the PKK.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak attend a funeral ceremony for police officer Hasim Usta who was killed in Saturday's blasts, in Istanbul, Turkey,

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak attend a funeral ceremony for police officer Hasim Usta who was killed in Saturday’s blasts, in Istanbul, Turkey, December 12, 2016. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

The crackdown against Kurdish politicians has coincided with widespread purges of state institutions after July’s failed coup, which the government blames on followers of a U.S.-based Muslim cleric.

Turkey says the measures are necessary to defend its security, while rights groups and some Western allies accuse it of skirting the rule of law and trampling on freedoms.

In a statement, the pro-Kurdish HDP condemned the attack and urged the government to end what it called the language and politics of “polarization, hostility and conflict”.

Soylu said that the first explosion was at an assembly point for riot police. The second came as police surrounded the suicide bomber in the nearby Macka park.

Thirty-eight people died, including 30 police and seven civilians, he said. One person remained unidentified.

Thirteen people have been detained in connection with the attacks, Soylu said.

A total of 155 people were being treated in hospital, with 14 of them in intensive care and five in surgery, Health Minister Recep Akdag told a news conference.

Flags flew at half-mast and Sunday was declared a day of national mourning.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said that Turkey’s allies should show solidarity with it in the fight against terrorism, a reference to disagreements with the United States over the fellow NATO member’s policy on Syria. Washington backs the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State. Turkey, meanwhile, says the militia is an extension of the PKK and a terrorist group.

In addition to the Kurdish insurgency, Turkey is battling Islamic State as a member of the United States-led coalition against the jihadist group. Less than a week ago Islamic State urged its supporters to target Turkey’s “security, military, economic and media establishment”.

‘MY SON WAS MASSACRED’

Video purporting to show the father of one of the victims, a 19-year-old medical student in Istanbul for a weekend visit, went viral on social media in Turkey.

“I don’t want my son to be a martyr, my son was massacred,” the footage showed the father saying. “His goal was to be a doctor and help people like this, but now I am carrying him back in a funeral car.”

Security remained tight in Istanbul, with police helicopters buzzing overhead in the Besiktas district near the stadium.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg condemned what he described as “horrific acts of terror”, while European leaders also sent messages of solidarity. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Erdogan to convey her condolences, sources in his office said.

The United States condemned the attack and said it stood with its NATO ally.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun, Ece Toksabay, Umit Bektas and Gulsen Solaker in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk, Osman Orsal and Murad Sezer in Istanbul; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Dale Hudson and David Goodman)

Cairo church bombing kills 25, raises fears among Christians

A nun cries at the scene of the Cairo Church bombing

By Ahmed Mohammed Hassan and Ali Abdelaty

CAIRO (Reuters) – A bombing at Cairo’s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people and wounded 49, many of them women and children attending Sunday mass, in the deadliest attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in years.

The attack comes as President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi fights battles on several fronts. His economic reforms have angered the poor, a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has seen thousands jailed, whilst an insurgency rages in Northern Sinai, led by the Egyptian branch of Islamic State.

The militant group has also carried out deadly attacks in Cairo and has urged its supporters to launch attacks around the world in recent weeks as it goes on the defensive in its Iraqi and Syrian strongholds.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but exiled Brotherhood officials and home-grown militant groups condemned the attack. Islamic State supporters celebrated on social media.

“God bless the person who did this blessed act,” wrote one supporter on Telegram.

The explosion took place in a chapel, which adjoins St Mark’s, Cairo’s main cathedral and the seat of Coptic Pope Tawadros II, where security is normally tight.

The United States said it “will continue to work with its partners to defeat such terrorist acts” and that it was committed to Egypt’s security, according to a White House statement on Sunday.

The UN Security Council urged “all States, in accordance with their obligations under international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, to cooperate actively with all relevant authorities” to hold those responsible accountable.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis condemned what he called the latest in a series of “brutal terrorist attacks” and said he was praying for the dead and wounded.

The chapel’s floor was covered in debris from shattered windows, its wooden pews blasted apart, its pillars blackened. Here and there lay abandoned shoes and sticky patches of blood.

“As soon as the priest called us to prepare for prayer, the explosion happened,” Emad Shoukry, who was inside when the blast took place, told Reuters.

“The explosion shook the place … the dust covered the hall and I was looking for the door, although I couldn’t see anything … I managed to leave in the middle of screams and there were a lot of people thrown on the ground.”

Security sources told Reuters at least six children were among the dead, with the blast detonating on the side of the church normally used by women.

They said the explosion was caused by a device containing at least 12 kg (26 pounds) of TNT.

Police and armored vehicles rushed to the area, as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the compound demanding revenge for the attack that took place on a Muslim holiday marking the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday and weeks before Christmas. Scuffles broke out with police.

A woman sitting near the cathedral in traditional long robes shouted, “kill them, kill the terrorists, what are you waiting for? … Why are you leaving them to bomb our homes?”

“EGYPTIAN BLOOD IS CHEAP”

Though Egypt’s Coptic Christians have traditionally been supporters of the government, angry crowds turned their ire against Sisi, saying his government had failed to protect them.

“As long as Egyptian blood is cheap, down, down with any president,” they chanted. Others chanted “the people demand the fall of the regime”, the rallying cry of the 2011 uprising that helped end Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Sisi’s office condemned what it described as a terrorist attack, declaring three days of mourning and promising justice. Al-Azhar, Egypt’s main Islamic center of learning, also denounced the attacks.

Orthodox Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s biggest Christian community.

Copts face regular attack by Muslim neighbors, who burn their homes and churches in poor rural areas, usually in anger over an inter-faith romance or the construction of church.

The last major attack on a church took place as worshippers left a New Year’s service in Alexandria weeks before the start of the 2011 uprising. At least 21 people were killed.

Egypt’s Christian community has felt increasingly insecure since Islamic State spread through Iraq and Syria in 2014, ruthlessly targeting religious minorities. In 2015, 21 Egyptian Christians working in Libya were killed by Islamic State.

The attack came two days after six police were killed in two bomb attacks, one of them claimed by Hasm, a recently-emerged group the government says is linked to the Brotherhood, which has been banned under Sisi as a terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood says it is peaceful. Several exiled Brotherhood officials condemned the bombing, as did Hasm and Liwaa’ al-Thawra, another local militant group.

Coptic Pope Tawadros II cut short a visit to Greece after learning of the attack. In a speech aired on state television, he said “the whole situation needs us all to be disciplined as much as possible … strong unity is the most important thing.”

Church officials said earlier on Sunday they would not allow the bombing to create sectarian differences.

But Christians, convinced attacks on them are not seriously investigated, say this time they want justice.

“Where was the security? There were five or six security cars stationed outside so where were they when 12 kg of TNT was carried inside?” said Mena Samir, 25, standing at the church’s metal gate. “They keep telling us national unity, the crescent with the cross … This time we will not shut up.”

(Additional reporting by Arwa Gaballa, Amr Abdallah, Mohamed Abdel Ghany, Amina Ismail, Mostafa Hashem in Cairo, Philip Pullella in Rome, Michelle Nichols in New York and; Yara Bayoumy in Washington; writing by Amina Ismail and Lin Noueihed; editing by Ros Russell and Raissa Kasolowsky)