Tag Archives: Islamic State

Islamic State says killing of Christian in Bangladesh was ‘lesson to others’

DHAKA (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed responsibility for stabbing a Christian to death in Bangladesh as a “lesson to others”, an online group that monitors extremist activity said, the latest killing declared by the militant group in the Muslim-majority nation.

The South Asian country has seen a surge in Islamist violence in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted.

The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said Islamic State claimed responsibility for killing Hussein Ali Sarkar in Kurigram, north of Dhaka.

The group reported on Twitter that a “security detachment” killed the “preacher” to be a “lesson to others”.

Police said the 68-year-old victim converted to Christianity from Islam in 1999 but was not a preacher.

Kurigram district police chief Tobarak Ullah said three attackers stabbed him while he was having his morning walk on Tuesday.

“They left the scene exploding crude bombs to create panic,” Ullah told Reuters by telephone.

“We have started an investigation into the murder. So far, we have not found any militant link.”

Five men were picked up for questioning, he said.

Over the last few months, Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the killings of two foreigners, attacks on members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups, but the government has denied that the militant group has a presence in Bangladesh.

Police say home-grown militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, thought to have been lying low since six of its top leaders were hanged in 2007, was behind the recent attacks.

Dozens of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen members have been arrested and at least five killed in shootouts since November, as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on militants seeking to make the moderate Muslim nation of 160 million a sharia-based state.

In 2005, the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen set off nearly 500 bombs almost simultaneously on a single day, including in Dhaka. Subsequent suicide attacks on courts killed 25 people and injured hundreds.

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Belgium names Brussels bomber brothers, key suspect on run

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium’s chief prosecutor named two brothers on Wednesday as Islamic State suicide bombers who killed at least 31 people in the most deadly attacks in Brussels’ history but said another key suspect was on the run.

Tuesday’s attacks on a city that is home to the European Union and NATO sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with authorities racing to review security at airports and on public transport. It also rekindled debate about lagging European security cooperation and flaws in police surveillance.

Washington announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Belgium on Friday to demonstrate support.

The Belgian federal prosecutor told a news conference that Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, one of two men who blew themselves up at Brussels airport on Tuesday, had left a will on a computer dumped in a rubbish bin near the militants’ hideout.

In it, he described himself as “always on the run, not knowing what to do anymore, being hunted everywhere, not being safe any longer and that if he hangs around, he risks ending up next to the person in a cell” – a reference to suspected Paris bomber Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested last week.

His brother Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, detonated a bomb an hour later on a crowded rush-hour metro train near the European Commission headquarters, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said.

Both men, born in Belgium, had criminal records for armed robbery but investigators had not linked them to Islamist militants until Abdeslam’s arrest, when police began a race against time to track down his suspected accomplices.

That seems to have prompted the bombers to rush into an attack in Belgium after months of lying low, according to the testament found on the laptop.

At least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded in the attacks, the prosecutor said. That toll could increase further because some of the bomb victims at Maelbeek metro station were blown to pieces and victims are hard to identify. Several survivors were still in critical condition.

The Bakraoui brothers were identified by their fingerprints and on security cameras, the prosecutor said. A second suicide bomber at the airport had yet to be identified and a third man, whom he did not name, had left the biggest bomb and ran out of the terminal before the explosions.

Belgian media named that man as Najim Laachraoui, 25, a suspected Islamic State recruiter and bomb-maker whose DNA was found on two explosives belts used in last November’s Paris attacks and at a Brussels safe house used by Abdeslam.

De Standaard newspaper, however, citing an unidentified source, named Laachraoui as the second suicide bomber at the airport.

Khalid El Bakraoui rented under a false name the apartment in the city’s Forest borough, where police hunting Abdeslam killed a gunman in a raid last week. He is also believed to have rented a safe house in the southern Belgian city of Charleroi used to mount the Paris attacks.

“BLACK DAYS”

Turkey said it had detained Ibrahim El Bakraoui near the Syrian border last year and deported him to the Netherlands before he was briefly held in Belgium, then released. “Belgium ignored our warning that this person is a foreign fighter,” President Tayyip Erdogan said.

The Brussels attacks came days after a suspected Islamic State suicide bomber blew himself up in Istanbul’s most popular shopping district, killing three Israelis and an Iranian.

The Syrian-based Islamist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks, warning of “black days” for those fighting it in Syria and Iraq. Belgian warplanes have joined the coalition in the Middle East, but Brussels has long been a hub of Islamist militants who operated elsewhere.

A minute’s silence was observed across Belgium at noon. Prime Minister Charles Michel canceled a trip to China and reviewed security measures with his inner cabinet before attending a memorial event at European Commission headquarters with King Philippe, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

“We are determined, admittedly with a strong feeling of pain in our stomachs, but determined to act,” Michel told a joint news conference with Valls. “France and Belgium are united in pain more than ever.”

Valls played down cross-border sniping over security, saying: “We must turn the page on naivete, a form of carefreeness that our societies have known.

“It is Europe that has been attacked. The response to terrorism must be European.”

EU justice and interior ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday, the Dutch EU presidency said.

More than 1,000 people gathered around an improvised shrine with candles and street paintings outside the Brussels bourse.

Belgium’s crisis coordination center kept the level of security alert at the maximum as the man hunt continued. Some buses and trains were running but the metro and the airport were closed, along with key road tunnels in Brussels.

The blasts fueled political debate across the globe about how to combat militants.

Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to succeed Obama in November’s U.S. election, suggested suspects could be tortured to avert such attacks. He also said in a British television interview that Muslims were not doing enough to prevent that kind of violence.

After a tip-off from a taxi driver who unwittingly drove the bombers to the airport, police searched an apartment in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek late into the night, finding another bomb, an Islamic State flag, 15 kg of the same kind of explosives used in the Paris attacks and bomb-making chemicals.

An unused explosive device was also found at the airport.

CLOSING IN

Security experts believed the blasts were probably in preparation before Friday’s arrest of locally based French national Abdeslam, 26, whom prosecutors accuse of a key role in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.

He was caught and has been speaking to investigators after a shootout at an apartment in the south of the city, after which another Islamic State flag and explosives were found.

About 300 Belgians are estimated to have fought with Islamists in Syria, making the country of 11 million the leading European exporter of foreign fighters and a focus of concern in France and other neighbors over its security capabilities.

Reviving arguments over Belgian security policies following the Paris attacks, in which 130 people died in an operation apparently organized from Brussels, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoke of “naiveté” on the part of “certain leaders” in holding back from security crackdowns on Muslim communities.

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders retorted that each country should look to its own social problems, saying France too had rough high-rise suburbs in which militants had become radicalized. Valls said France had no place teaching Belgium lessons and had problems with its own communities.

Brussels airport seemed likely to remain shut for several days over the busy Easter holiday weekend, since the departure hall was still being combed as a crime scene on Wednesday and repairs can only begin once investigators are finished.

(Editing by Paul Taylor and Ralph Boulton)

Brussels attacks another reminder of Belgian security’s weak link

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The Belgian government warned at the weekend that there might be an attack after the security services captured their most wanted man. It came swiftly.

Tuesday’s explosions, which killed at least 30 people at the main Brussels airport and an underground rail station, came just days after Belgium’s security services caught the last surviving suspect in November’s attacks on Paris.

Belgium has announced $450 million of extra spending to upgrade its security capabilities since it emerged that the country of 11 million people served as the base for the Paris attackers who killed 130 people. But Tuesday’s bombings at home show how much further it still has to go.

Security experts say squabbling layers of government, under-funded spy services, an openness to fundamentalist preachers and a thriving black market in weapons all make Belgium among the most vulnerable countries in Europe to militant attacks.

One U.S. government official told Reuters that Tuesday’s attacks showed Belgian authorities still “have not upped their game”.

Catching Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam on Friday was a coup for Belgium’s security services. But his four months apparently hiding and moving about the capital were also proof of how difficult the task of securing Belgium is likely to be.

It is still too early to say whether Tuesday’s attacks were directly linked to Abdeslam’s capture. U.S. officials believe they may have been already in the works before his arrest, and was not highly sophisticated or the type of attack that required a huge amount of ingenuity.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Charles Michel, who had locked down the capital for days in November after the Paris attacks, warned on Sunday of “a real threat”.

U.S. government sources said that, while the United States and Belgium had believed that another attack after Paris was highly likely, they did not have hard intelligence about where or when such an attack would occur.

Reviving arguments over Belgian policies in the wake of the Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed in an operation apparently organized from Brussels, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin spoke of “naivete” on the part of “certain leaders” in holding back from security crackdowns on Muslim communities.

A lawmaker from Michel’s party, Didier Ducarme, hit back on French television. He said comments like Sapin’s “are starting to seriously irritate me” and noted that it was a France-based gunman who killed four at Brussels’ Jewish Museum in 2014.

BENEATH THE RADAR

Catching up after years of neglect was always going to be a problem for Belgium’s intelligence agency, which has just 600 staff, a third as many as in the neighboring Netherlands, a country not much larger and with fewer home-grown jihadists fighting in Syria or Iraq.

Belgium has supplied the highest per capita number of fighters to Syria of any European nation, and the crowded Brussels borough of Molenbeek has been described as a “Jihadist air base” because of the number of militant suspects believed to be living there.

To follow a single suspect around 24 hours a day without being detected, security agencies need crews of as many as 36 officers, U.S. and European officials estimate, meaning even well-staffed agencies such as Britain’s MI5 can only closely follow a limited number of suspects at any particular time.

According to Alain Winants, head of the Belgian intelligence service from 2006 until 2014, Belgium was one of the last places in Europe to obtain modern techniques to gather information, such as telephone taps. On one occasion, police had to deny they let Abdeslam slip due to a law banning house raids at night.

Michel has already said he accepts more is needed. It is impossible for any country to completely secure “soft targets” like busy railway stations and airports. But Belgium also has unique challenges.

The patchwork country divided between French- and Dutch-speakers has a bureaucracy that hinders the sharing of information, with six parliaments for its regions and linguistic communities, 193 local police forces and, in Brussels, 19 autonomous mayors.

That allows militants to hide below the radar in a way they cannot in the much more centralized Netherlands, as well as slowing the passing of new laws to rein in the preaching of hate in mosques and a roaring trade in illegal weapons.

Nearly 6,000 firearms are seized every year in Belgium, more than in all of France, police data shows, often sold by Balkan crime networks to home-grown Belgian jihadists.

VANISHING IN MOLENBEEK

Belgian authorities have been accused of neglecting Muslims and failing to help find jobs to shield them from people seeking to radicalize desperate young men. Youth unemployment can reach up to 40 percent in some parts of wealthy Belgium.

“Because of the difficulty of fitting into a hostile society, they look for alternative networks where they can blend in,” said counter-terrorism expert Rik Coolsaet at the Brussels think-tank Egmont. “Gang activities and the foreign fighters’ undertakings are carried out on the margins of the local environment, where they grew up,” Coolsaet said.

Just a few miles from the power of the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, but effectively a world away, Molenbeek on the poorer side of the city’s industrial-era canal has become a notoriously difficult place to track militants.

Abdeslam was able to vanish into the streets of Molenbeek, some quarters of which are 80 percent Muslim, for four months, protected by family, friends and petty criminals, not far from his parents’ home.

Some problems go back to the 1970s, when Belgium, still heavily industrial at the time, sought favor and cheap oil from Saudi Arabia by providing mosques for Gulf-trained preachers.

European officials acknowledge that no amount of quick funding increases for Belgium’s intelligence services will immediately solve the multitude of challenges.

“We know that it will take a long time,” said General Gratien Maire, deputy head of the French defense staff, said at an event in Brussels on Sunday.

“So we have to be honest and clear with our people.”

(Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels, Mark Hosenball in Washington and Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by Peter Graff and Cynthia Osterman)

Police hunt suspect after Islamic State kills 30 in Brussels suicide attacks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday which killed at least 30 people, with police hunting a suspect who fled the air terminal.

Police issued a wanted notice for a young man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden luggage trolley at Zaventem airport alongside two others who, investigators said, had later blown themselves up in the terminal, killing at least 10 people.

Officials said 20 died on the metro train close to European Union institutions, and Islamic State said that too was a suicide attack.

The coordinated assault triggered security alerts across Europe and drew global expressions of support, four days after Brussels police had captured the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State’s attacks on Paris last November.

Belgian authorities were still checking whether the attacks were linked to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, according to Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, although U.S. officials said the level of organization involved suggested they had previously been in preparation.

Last week, explosives and an Islamic flag were found during a raid on a Brussels flat. Police also found a fresh fingerprint of Abdeslam’s there, putting them on to his trail. It was not clear if Abdeslam had been involved at that stage in planning the airport attack.

In a statement, Islamic State said “caliphate soldiers, strapped with suicide vests and carrying explosive devices and machineguns” had targeted the airport and metro station, adding that they had set off their vests amidst the crowds.

A bomb and an Islamic State flag were also found on Tuesday in a flat in Brussels, and Van Leeuw confirmed a manhunt was under way. “A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-colored jacket and a hat, is actively being sought,” he told a news conference.

A government official said the third suspect had been seen running away from the airport building. Local media reported police had found an undetonated suicide vest in the area.

Belgian police appealed to travelers who had been at the airport and metro station to send in any photographs taken before the attacks in their efforts to identify the bombers.

After questioning Abdeslam, police issued a wanted notice on Monday, identifying 25-year-old Najim Laachraoui as linked to the Paris attacks. The poor quality of Tuesday’s CCTV images and of the Laachraoui wanted poster left open whether he might be the person caught on the airport cameras.

Citizens of the United States, Spain and Sweden were among the injured, their governments reported.

SHOUTS IN ARABIC

A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic and shots shortly before two blasts struck in a packed airport departure lounge at the airport.

Belgian media published the security camera picture of three young men pushing laden luggage trolleys. Police later issued a cropped version of the same photograph, showing only one of the three.

“If you recognize this individual or if you have information on this attack, please contact the investigators,” the notice read. “Discretion assured.”

Police operations were under way at several points in the city but a lockdown imposed immediately after the attacks was eased and commuters and students headed home as public transport partially reopened.

In its statement, Islamic State said: “We promise the crusader alliance against the Islamic State that they will have black days in return for their aggression against the Islamic State.”

Belgium, home to the EU and the headquarters of the NATO military alliance, has sent warplanes to take part in operations against Islamic State in the Middle East.

Austrian Horst Pilger, who was awaiting a flight with his family when the attackers struck, said his children had thought fireworks were going off, but he instantly knew an assault was underway.

“My wife and I both thought ‘bomb’. We looked into each other’s eyes,” he told Reuters. “Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive.”

Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building.

Security services found and destroyed a third bomb at the airport.

“BLACK MOMENT”

U.S. President Barack Obama led calls of support to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel after Brussels had gone into a state of virtual lock-down.

“We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism,” Obama told a news conference in Cuba. “We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.”

Michel spoke at a Brussels news conference of a “black moment” for his country. “What we had feared has come to pass.”

In Paris, where Islamic State killed 130 people in November, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the colors of the Belgian flag on Tuesday evening in a show of solidarity with Brussels.

Brussels airport will remain closed on Wednesday, its chief executive Arnaud Feist told reporters.

Public broadcaster VRT said police had found a Kalashnikov assault rifle next to the body of an attacker at the airport. Such weapons have become a trademark of Islamic State-inspired attacks in Europe, notably in Belgium and France, including on Nov. 13 in Paris.

Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, told Reuters he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. “Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed.”

“I helped carry out five people dead, their legs destroyed,” he said, his hands covered in blood.

Others said they also heard shooting before the blasts.

A witness said the blasts occurred at a check-in desk.

Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Bloodied bodies lay around.

Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes. Smoke rose from the building through shattered windows and passengers fled down a slipway, some still hauling their bags.

Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, all wary of spillover from conflict in Syria, were among states announcing extra security measures. Security was tightened at the Dutch border with Belgium.

The blast hit the train as it left Maelbeek station, close to EU institutions, heading to the city center.

VRT carried a photograph of a metro carriage at a platform with doors and windows completely blown out, its structure deformed and interior mangled and charred.

A local journalist tweeted a photograph of a person lying covered in blood among smoke outside the station. Ambulances were ferrying the wounded away and sirens rang out across the area.

“WE ARE AT WAR”

“We are at war and we have been subjected to acts of war in Europe for the last few months,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said.

Train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Britain advised its citizens to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels.

Security services have been on a high state of alert across western Europe for fear of militant attacks backed by Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the Paris attack.

While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates.

Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for the Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday. Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a revenge attack.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Heavens in London, Ali Abdelaty and Eric Knecht in Cairo, Barbara Lewis, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Clement Rossignol, Julia Fioretti, Meredith McGrath, Foo Yun Chee, Robin Emmott, Jan Strupczewski, Bate Felix and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Jochen Elegeert in Amsterdam; Editing by Ralph Boulton and David Stamp)

Brussels attacks stir debate about global airport security

BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) – Twin explosions in the departure hall of Brussels Airport prompted several countries worldwide to review or tighten airport security on Tuesday and raised questions about how soon passengers should be screened when entering terminals.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train which killed at least 30 people.

Prosecutors said the blasts at Zaventem airport, which serves more than 23 million passengers a year, were believed to be caused by suicide bombers.

Authorities responded by stepping up the number of police on patrol at airports in London, Paris and Frankfurt and at other transport hubs as Brussels rail services were also halted. Airlines scrambled to divert flights as Brussels airport announced it would close through Wednesday.

In the United States, the country’s largest cities were placed on high alert and the National Guard was called in to increase security at New York City’s two airports.

The Obama administration was expected to announce new measures to tighten U.S. airport security.

A United Nations agency is already due to review airport security following the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt by a makeshift soda-can bomb in October last year. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for smuggling the bomb on board.

Other recent incidents have also raised questions about how planes are protected. Last month, a bomber brought a device onto an airliner in Somalia and blew a hole in the fuselage. A year ago, a disturbed pilot deliberately crashed a Germanwings airliner killing 150 people, exploiting anti-terrorist cockpit defenses to lock himself at the controls.

But there has been less attention focused on how airports themselves are secured, before passengers check in for flights, despite a number of attacks.

“It strikes me as strange that only half of the airport is secure. Surely the whole airport should be secure, from the minute you arrive in the car park,” said Matthew Finn, managing director of independent aviation security consultants Augmentiq.

In 2011, a suicide bomber struck the arrival hall at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, killing 37 people. In 2013, a shooter killed a U.S. government Transportation Security Administration officer at Los Angeles international airport. Another gunman killed two there in 2002.

The last major incident at a western European airport was in 2007, when two people tried to drive a jeep packed with propane canisters into the terminal at Glasgow Airport in Scotland. One of the attackers died.

Several airports afterwards stepped up security for cars, but entrances have largely remained open for those on foot.

CHECKPOINTS

European countries reviewed overall security at public locations after November’s attacks by bombers and gunmen in Paris, in which 130 people were killed and hundreds injured, but made no specific changes to airport security.

“Certainly after Paris, there was no significant change to the threat assessment here… We’ll see what happens today,” Robin Hayes, CEO of JetBlue Airways Corp, in an interview on sidelines of an aviation summit in Washington.

The relative openness of public airport areas in Western Europe contrasts with some in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where travelers’ documents and belongings are checked before they are allowed to enter the airport building.

In Turkey, passengers and bags are screened on entering the terminal and again after check-in. Moscow also checks people at terminal entrances.

“Two terrorists who enter the terminal area with explosive devices, this is undoubtedly a colossal failure,” Pini Schiff, the former security chief at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport and currently the CEO of the Israel Security Association, said in an interview with Israel Radio.

Ben Gurion Airport is known for its tough security, including passenger profiling to identify those viewed as suspicious, bomb sniffing devices and questioning of each individual traveler.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where authorities are on high alert for attacks by Somali-based al Shabaab militants, passengers have to get out of their cars, which are then searched, at a checkpoint a kilometer from the main terminal.

In Nairobi and other airports such as the Philippines capital Manila, passengers also have to present their passports and have bags X-rayed to gain entry to terminal buildings.

“I find that checks in front of buildings, such as those at government buildings in the United States, would be 100 percent fine,” said Ralf Leukers, a passenger at Frankfurt airport.

“If you don’t have anything to hide, then you should be happy to have your bags searched.”

But such checks could create upheaval at terminals and rely on security staff paying close attention.

“Any movement of the security ‘comb’ to the public entrance of a terminal building would cause congestion, inconvenience and flight delays, while the inevitable resulting queues would themselves present an attractive target,” said Ben Vogel, Editor, IHS Jane’s Airport Review.

A group representing Europe’s airports said kerbside screening would “be moving the target rather than securing it”.

Augmentiq’s Finn said governments should share more intelligence information and make greater use of modern technology that allows for discreet screening of passengers as they pass through gates or revolving doors.

“This is not unique to Brussels; this is a global phenomenon. We have got to effect the right kind of change, otherwise we will be scratching our heads over why the same questions are being posed and not being answered,” he said.

But adding pre-terminal screening and other measures at airports would be costly.

“I don’t see it happening anytime soon,” said Daniel Wagner, CEO of Country Risk Solutions, a security consulting firm in Connecticut in the United States. “There’s no sense of urgency and not enough money devoted to the problem.”

(Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Sarah Young in London, Clara Ferreira Marques in Mumbai, Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Dastin in Washington and Alwyn Scott in New York; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Peter Graff)

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)