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Tag: ISIS

  • Closing arguments conclude in trial of accused NYC bike path terror suspect | CNN

    Closing arguments conclude in trial of accused NYC bike path terror suspect | CNN

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Closing arguments concluded Tuesday in the trial of Sayfullo Saipov, the man prosecutors say was radicalized by ISIS propaganda before he allegedly drove a rented truck down a bike path in New York, killing eight pedestrians in 2017.

    The judge is expected to charge the jury with the case Wednesday morning. He indicated the reading of the jury instructions will take several hours before deliberations begin.

    Defense attorney David Patton acknowledged in his closing argument that the defense does not dispute facts of the attack Saipov is accused of committing on Halloween in 2017.

    “It is no defense ‘I was convinced by others to do it,’ nobody forced him to do this and he’s guilty of murder and assault among many other crimes,” Patton told the jury.

    Six foreign tourists and two Americans were killed in the attack, the deadliest terrorist attack New York had seen since 9/11.

    The defense attorney disputed, however, prosecutors’ claim that Saipov was motivated to commit the attack to gain entry to ISIS.

    He argued that was not Saipov’s goal, and that the attack was spurred by religious fervor to please his God and “ascend to paradise” in his religion.

    Patton also noted ISIS does not call its members “soldiers of the Caliphate” as Saipov has referred to himself, according to trial evidence, but rather identifies its members by another term.

    The defense attorney said Saipov’s claim that an ISIS leader told him to commit the attack likely comes from a propaganda video recovered on his phone. Buying into ISIS propaganda does not suggest Saipov had any direct contact or coordination with ISIS members ahead of the attack, Patton said.

    In this courtroom sketch, Saipov listens during closing statements Tuesday.

    The people communicating with Saipov in “The House of the Caliphate” messaging group could have been anywhere, according to the defense attorney, and were not necessarily ISIS members in Syria or other territories occupied by the terrorist organization.

    Saipov faces eight capital counts of murder in aid of racketeering activity that could result in the death penalty if he’s convicted. The jury must determine in part whether the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that gaining entrance to ISIS was a substantial motivating factor for Saipov’s attack.

    “I just hope you will see why it is so important for you to get that right,” Patton told the jury in closing.

    Prosecutors told the jury in the government’s rebuttal Tuesday evening that Saipov must be convicted on all counts as they stand.

    “People who ISIS relies upon to conquer territory and kill non-believers, those are its soldiers. Of course they are part of ISIS. That is common sense,” prosecutor Amanda Leigh Houle said. “An organization engaged in a worldwide war needs its soldiers and its soldiers are part of the group.”

    The trial is the first federal death penalty case heard under President Joe Biden, who previously pledged to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level.

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  • Suicide bomber attacks Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, killing at least 13

    Suicide bomber attacks Taliban regime in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, killing at least 13

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    AFGHANISTAN-BLAST
    A member of the Taliban security forces stands guard on a blocked road after a suicide blast near Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, at the Zanbaq Square in Kabul, January 11, 2023.

    WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty


    A large explosion caused by a suicide bomber in Kabul’s diplomatic district left at least 13 people dead and others injured Wednesday in the latest attack targeting Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, according to a CBS News source. The blast happened at the main entrance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs just as employees were leaving for the day, and images shared on social media showing multiple people on the ground on the road in front of the building’s entrance.

    A former employee of the ministry told CBS News that at least 13 people were killed, all of them employees of the foreign ministry. 

    Earlier, Khalid Zadran, a spokesman for the Kabul police force, confirmed to reporters that the explosion, which struck around 4 p.m. local time, had killed at least five people and left many more wounded. An emergency hospital in Kabul run by an Italian charity said it had received at least 40 people for treatment from the incident, but it did not say how many had died.

    Zadran, who heads the police force now led, along with all of Afghanistan’s government institutions, by the Taliban, said the group “condemns such an aimless and cowardly attack on Muslims,” adding a vow that those responsible for the blast “will be found and punished.” 

    “A suicide bomber tried to enter the Ministry but was identified by security forces and blew himself up,” Ahmadullah Muttaqi, an official from the Taliban’s office of the first deputy prime minister, said on Twitter. 

    A man who identified himself to CBS News only by his first name, Enayat, said he was shopping at a nearby mall and heard a brief exchange of gunfire following the blast.


    Taliban bans women in Afghanistan from university education

    05:34

    “It was a powerful blast and then gunfire,” he told CBS News over the phone. “When I came out, I saw many dead bodies lying on the road.”

    Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for the ministry, told CBS News that reports the attack had occurred as the Taliban’s foreign minister met with China’s ambassador to Afghanistan were incorrect.

    The ministry is located on a protected street in the diplomatic district of Kabul, where there are also several foreign embassies, former President Hamid Karzai’s home, and other important government buildings.

    Since the Taliban stormed back to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the local branch of the ISIS terror group, known as ISIS-K or ISIS Khorasan, has conducted some of the deadliest attacks in the country — often targeting the Taliban’s security forces and supporters.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attack, but ISIS-K has recently stepped up its violence across the country.

    The terror group has recently targeted a checkpoint at Kabul’s military airport, killing several people, and attacked a hotel used largely by Chinese nationals. Before that, a ISIS-K suicide bomber targeted Russian diplomats, killing 20 people, including two Russians.

    Despite the attacks, Taliban leaders have repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by ISIS-K to security in the country.

    In a tweet, the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan condemned the attack and said the “rising insecurity” in Afghanistan was “of grave concern.”

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  • Yemen Fast Facts | CNN

    Yemen Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at Yemen, a country located on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, sharing a border with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

    (from the CIA World Fact Book)
    Area: 527,968 sq km (twice the size of Wyoming)

    Population: 30,984,689 (2022 est.)

    Median age: 19.8 years

    Capital: Sanaa

    Ethnic groups: Predominantly Arab; but also Afro-Arab, South Asian, European

    Religions: Muslim (99.1%: an estimated 65% are Sunni and 35% are Shia) and small numbers of Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Baha’i (2020)

    Unemployment: 27% (2014 est.)

    Yemen is part of the Arab League.

    Yemen has been mired in political unrest and armed conflict, which intensified in early 2015. Houthi rebels – a minority Shia group from the north of the country – drove out the US-backed government and took over the capital, Sanaa. The crisis quickly escalated into a multi-sided war, with neighboring Saudi Arabia leading a coalition of Gulf states against the Houthi rebels. The coalition is advised and supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, among other nations.

    READ: Yemen: What you need to know about how we got here

    May 22, 1990 – The Republic of Yemen is created from the unification of North Yemen, the Yemen Arab Republic and South Yemen, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.

    May-July 1994 – A civil war between northerners and southerners begins due to disagreements between supporters of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, from North Yemen, and Vice President Ali Salim al-Baid, from South Yemen. Troops loyal to Saleh win the war.

    September 25, 1999 – Saleh wins the country’s first direct presidential election, with 96.3% of the vote. Opposition leaders allege tampering at the ballot box.

    September 23, 2006 – Saleh wins reelection to a seven-year term with 77% of the vote.

    September 17, 2008 – Ten people, Yemeni citizens and police officers, are killed in terrorist attack on the US embassy in Sanaa.

    December 28, 2009 – A Yemen-based arm of al Qaeda, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), claims responsibility for a failed bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25.

    January 2, 2010 – US President Barack Obama announces a new counterterrorism partnership with Yemen, involving intelligence sharing, military training and joint attacks.

    January 3, 2010 – The United States and the United Kingdom temporarily close their embassies in Sanaa after they receive word that AQAP may be planning an attack on the facilities. The US embassy reopens two days later after Yemeni forces kill two AQAP militants in a counterterrorism operation.

    January 2010 – A group called Friends of Yemen is established in the UK to rally support for Yemen from the international community. They later hold meetings in London and Saudi Arabia.

    January 27, 2011 – Protests break out, inspired by demonstrations in neighboring countries. The unrest continues for months, while crackdowns on protesters lead to civilian deaths.

    June 3, 2011 – Opposition forces launch missiles at the presidential palace, injuring Saleh and killing several others.

    September 2, 2011 – More than two million people demonstrate across Yemen, demanding that the military remove Saleh from power.

    September 23, 2011 – Saleh returns to Yemen after more than three months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia.

    September 30, 2011 – Anwar al-Awlaki, spokesman for AQAP, is killed by a CIA drone strike.

    November 23, 2011 – Saleh signs an agreement in Saudi Arabia transferring his executive powers to Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, Yemen’s vice president, effectively ending his rule.

    January 21, 2012 – Parliament approves a law that grants Saleh immunity from prosecution.

    February 21, 2012 – Yemen holds presidential elections to replace Saleh. There is only one candidate on the ballot, Vice President Hadi, the acting president since November 2011. Hadi receives 99.8% of the 6.6 million votes cast, according to the government elections committee.

    February 25, 2012 – Hadi is sworn in as president.

    May 21, 2012 – During a rehearsal for a military parade in Sanaa, a suicide bomber kills more than 100 Yemeni troops and wounds more than 200.

    May 23, 2012 – Friends of Yemen pledges more than $4 billion in aid to help the country fight terrorism and boost its economy. The amount is later increased to $7.9 billion. There are delays, however, that hold up delivery of the funds, according to Reuters.

    December 5, 2013 – Militants attack a Defense Ministry hospital in Sanaa. They ram the building with an explosives-laden vehicle and gunmen battle security forces inside. At least 52 people are killed, including four foreign doctors, according to the government.

    December 15, 2013 – Parliament calls for an end to drone strikes on its territory three days after a US missile attack mistakenly hits a wedding convoy, killing 14 civilians.

    February 10, 2014 – State news reports that Hadi has approved making Yemen a federal state consisting of six regions: two in the south, and four in the north. Sanaa is designated as neutral territory.

    September 21, 2014 – Hadi, Houthi rebels and representatives of major political parties sign a ceasefire deal. The United Nations-brokered deal ends a month of protests by Houthis that essentially halted life in Sanaa and resulted in hundreds of people being killed or injured.

    January 17, 2015 – Houthi rebels kidnap Hadi’s Chief of Staff Ahmed bin Mubarak in a push for more political power. He is released 10 days later, according to Reuters.

    January 20, 2015 – Houthi rebels take over the presidential palace.

    January 22, 2015 – President Hadi resigns shortly after the prime minister and the cabinet step down. Houthis say they will withdraw their fighters from Sanaa if the government agrees to constitutional changes including fair representation for marginalized groups within the country. No agreement is reached.

    February 11, 2015 – The United States and the United Kingdom suspend embassy operations in Yemen.

    March 20, 2015 – Terrorists bomb two mosques in Sanaa, killing at least 137 and wounding 357. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.

    March 22, 2015 – Houthi rebels seize the international airport in Taiz.

    March 26, 2015 – Warplanes from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and other countries strike Houthi rebel targets.

    December 6, 2015 – The governor of the city of Aden and six bodyguards are killed in a car bombing. ISIS claims responsibility.

    December 18-19, 2015 – At least 100 people are killed as violence erupts in the Harath district of Hajjah, a strategic border near Saudi Arabia.

    April-August 2016 – Direct peace talks between the warring parties take place in Kuwait, but fail after Houthi rebels reject a UN proposal aimed at ending the war. Yemeni government officials leave the discussions shortly afterward.

    November 28, 2016 – The Iranian-backed Houthi movement forms a new government in the capital. Abdul Aziz Habtoor, who defected from Hadi’s government and joined the Houthi coalition in 2015, is its leader, according to the movement’s news agency Saba.

    December 18, 2016 – A suicide bomber strikes as soldiers line up to receive their salaries at the Al Solban military base in the southern city of Aden. The strike kills at least 52 soldiers and injures 34 others, two Yemeni senior security officials tell CNN. ISIS claims responsibility.

    January 29, 2017 – US Central Command announces that a Navy SEAL was killed during a raid on a suspected al Qaeda hideout in a Yemeni village. The Navy SEAL is later identified as William Owens. The Pentagon reports that 14 terrorists were killed during the raid. Yemeni officials say civilians got caught in the crossfire and 13 people died, including eight-year-old Nawar Anwar Al-Awalki, the daughter of Anwar Al-Awalki. The raid was authorized by US President Donald Trump, days after he was sworn in as commander in chief.

    February 8, 2017 – Two senior Yemeni officials tell CNN that the government has requested that the United States stop ground operations in the country unless it has full approval.

    May 15, 2017 – Save the Children reports that 242 people have died of cholera as an outbreak spreads through Sanaa and beyond.

    October 16, 2017 – US forces conduct airstrikes against two ISIS training camps in what a defense official tells CNN are the first US strikes specifically targeting ISIS in Yemen.

    November 4, 2017 – Houthi rebels fire a missile at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. The Saudi government says that their military intercepted the missile before it reached its target. The Saudis carry out airstrikes on Sanaa in response.

    November 6, 2017 – Saudi Arabia blocks humanitarian aid planes from landing in Yemen. The move is in retaliation for the attempted missile strike on Riyadh.

    December 4, 2017 – Saleh is killed by Houthi rebels as he tries to flee Sanaa.

    December 6, 2017 – Trump issues a statement that he has directed his administration to call for an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade.

    December 21, 2017 – The International Committee of the Red Cross announces that one million cases of cholera have been reported in Yemen since the outbreak began during the spring. More than 2,200 people have died, according to the World Health Organization. It is the largest outbreak of the disease in recent history.

    April 3, 2018 – Speaking at a UN Pledging Conference on Yemen, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres notes that, in its fourth year of conflict, more than three-quarters of the population, 22 million, require humanitarian aid. Regarding hunger alone, “some 18 million people are food insecure; one million more than when we convened last year.”

    August 3, 2018 – The World Health Organization warns that Yemen is teetering on the brink of a third cholera epidemic.

    August 9, 2018 – A Saudi-led coalition bombs a school bus, killing 40 boys returning from a day trip in the northern Saada governorate. Fifty-one people are killed in total. Later, munitions experts tell CNN that the bomb, a 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb made by Lockheed Martin, was sold as part of a US State Department-sanctioned arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi coalition blames “incorrect information” for the strike, admits it was a mistake and takes responsibility.

    November 20, 2018 – Save the Children says that an estimated 85,000 children under the age of 5 may have died from extreme hunger or disease since the war in Yemen escalated in early 2015.

    December 6, 2018 – The opposing sides in Yemen’s conflict begin direct talks in Sweden, the first direct discussions between the parties since 2016.

    December 18, 2018 – A ceasefire reached in Sweden between Yemen’s warring parties goes into effect at midnight (4 p.m. ET December 17) in the strategic port city of Hodeidah.

    February 2019 – A CNN investigation reveals that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have transferred US-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other groups on the ground in Yemen. The weapons have also made their way into the hands of Iranian-backed rebels, exposing some of America’s sensitive military technology to Tehran and potentially endangering the lives of US troops in other war zones.

    May 2019 – A CNN investigation exposes the theft or “diversion” of food aid, some of which is being stolen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, on a scale far greater than has been reported before.

    June 2019 – The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) finds that the total number of reported fatalities in Yemen is more than 91,000 since 2015.

    June 12, 2019 – A missile fired by Houthi rebels strikes the arrivals hall of Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia, injuring 26 people. On July 2, a second attack occurs when Houthi rebels execute a drone strike on the same airport, injuring nine civilians. according to the Houthi-run Al-Masirah news agency.

    August 11, 2019 – A spokesperson for Yemeni separatists tells CNN that they have taken control of Aden, which had been the seat of the Saudi-backed government since Houthis took over Sanaa in 2014.

    January 19, 2020 – At least 80 Yemeni soldiers attending prayers at a mosque are killed and 130 others injured in ballistic missile and drone attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, according to the UN Special Envoy for Yemen.

    December 26, 2020 – Yemen’s new 24-member cabinet, the power-sharing government brokered by Saudi Arabia, is sworn in. The new cohesive government will have equal representatives from Yemen’s internationally recognized government and southern separatists, their coalition allies in the war against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

    February 12, 2021 – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announces the removal of Yemen’s Houthi rebels from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations, effective February 16, reversing the Trump administration’s January 2020 designation that faced bipartisan backlash from politicians and humanitarian organizations.

    April 2, 2022 – Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis and their rival Saudi-led coalition agree to a nationwide truce. It is the most significant step towards ending the hostilities since the war began seven years ago, and a win for UN and US mediators who for the past year have been trying to engineer a permanent peace deal. The renewable two-month truce is meant to halt all military operations in Yemen and across its borders.

    October 2, 2022 – After a rare six months of relative calm, the truce between Yemen’s warring sides expires. The two-month truce had been renewed twice but ends after the two sides fail to renew their deal.

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  • French company to pay nearly $778 million as part of plea deal to US charge of providing support to ISIS | CNN Politics

    French company to pay nearly $778 million as part of plea deal to US charge of providing support to ISIS | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A French cement company admitted Tuesday to making millions of dollars of payments that supported ISIS and another terrorist organization as part of an effort to maintain its operations in Syria as the civil war escalated.

    The company, Lafarge SA, is paying a financial penalty of nearly $778 million and pleaded guilty to a US federal count of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS and another terrorist organization as part of a deal with the US Justice Department.

    It is an unprecedented corporate prosecution under the material support of terrorism law, according to the Justice Department. The company pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday.

    The cement company entered a revenue sharing scheming with ISIS and the al-Nusrah Front that produced millions for the terrorist groups, according to court filings from the plea deal the Justice Department reached with Lafarge.

    “Lafarge made a deal with the devil,” US Attorney Breon Peace, of the Eastern District of New York, said at a press conference after the court proceedings.

    Lafarge and Lafarge Cement Syria – a dormant subsidiary that is also a defendant in the prosecution – entered the conspiracy with “the explicit purpose of incentivizing ISIS to act in a manner that would promote LAFARGE’s and LCS’s security and economic interests,” court documents said.

    Payments that the companies made through intermediaries to the terrorist groups amounted to approximately $5.92 million. When Lafarge evacuated the cement plant in 2014, ISIS took over the plant and sold the cement it had produced for roughly $3.2 million, according to the Justice Department.

    “The defendants paid millions of dollars to ISIS, a terrorist group that otherwise operated on a shoestring budget – millions of dollars that ISIS could use to recruit members, wage war against governments and conduct brutal terrorist attacks worldwide,” Breon said.

    The court filings quote several emails and other documents from the company shedding light on the scheme, which revolved around a cement plant Lafarge was running in Syria.

    Among the communications was an August 2013 email from one executive to two other executives, in which the executive said that, “It is clear that we have an issue with ISIS and al Nusra and we have asked our partner” – referring to an intermediary – “to work on it.”

    A November 2013 agreement between ISIS and LSC, written on a document with ISIS letterhead, laid out a deal for ISIS to let trucks access the company’s cement factory for 400 Syrian pounds per truck, according to the new filings.

    “Relatedly, an ISIS vehicle pass dated April 26, 2014, and bearing ISIS’s letterhead and stamp, allowed LCS employees ‘to pass through after the required work. This is after they have fulfilled their dues to us,’” the court submissions said.

    A July 2014 email from one executive to two others referred to the revenue-sharing scheme as a “cake” to be shared: “We have to maintain the principle that we are ready to share the ‘cake,’ if there is a ‘cake,’” the email said, according to the new filings.

    Prosecutors said Tuesday that the executives sought to conceal the scheme by using personal, rather than company, emails to communicate about it. The executives also falsified documents to suggest that the company had terminated its relationship with an intermediary who was working with ISIS, according to the new filings.

    Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Tuesday that “corporate criminals” had “joined hands” with terrorists.

    “In its pursuit of profits, Lafarge and its top executives not only broke the law, they helped finance a violent reign of terror that ISIS and al-Nusrah imposed on the people of Syria,” Monaco said.

    The executives who participated in the scheme were located in France and countries in the Middle East, according to the DOJ’s investigation, and it did not involve employees of the company based in the United States. The conduct ended before the completion of Lafarge’s acquisition by Holcim, its current parent company, the court filings said.

    “Lafarge SA and LCS have accepted responsibility for the actions of the individual executives involved, whose behavior was in flagrant violation of Lafarge’s Code of Conduct. We deeply regret that this conduct occurred and have worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve this matter,” the company said in a statement.

    The company’s dealings with the terrorist group were the subject of an internal investigation several years ago. At the conclusion of that probe, the corporation said that employees of a legacy company were paying off intermediaries without regard to the identity of the groups involved in order to keep operations running and the plant safe as violence escalated in the region.

    “[T]he combination of the war zone chaos and the ‘can-do’ approach to maintain operations in these circumstances may have caused those involved to seriously misjudge the situation and to neglect to focus sufficiently on the legal and reputational implications of their conduct,” Lafarge Holcim, as the company is now known, said in a public statement in 2017.

    Magali Anderson, a top executive at Lafarge, pleaded guilty on behalf of the company.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • U.S. troops carry out raid in Syria against

    U.S. troops carry out raid in Syria against

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    US troops train YPG/PKK in Syria
    U.S. forces provide military training to members of Kurdish militias at the Al-Malikiyah district in Syria’s Al-Hasakah province, September 7, 2022.

    Hedil Amir/Anadolu Agency/Getty


    U.S. forces have carried out a rare raid in Syria in territory held by dictator Bashar Assad’s regime targeting the ISIS terror group. CBS News correspondent Cami McCormick said the U.S. military’s Central Command would confirm only that American forces had conducted a raid in northeast Syria targeting a “senior” ISIS official, releasing no further details.

    A U.S. official told CBS News senior national security correspondent David Martin the raid involved U.S. special operations forces who swept in by helicopter. The official said one person was killed and another wounded, but that the military was still working to confirm their identities. There were no U.S. casualties.

    Syrian state television had reported earlier that one person was killed in the raid by airborne forces and others were captured. The operation was the latest U.S. effort to clamp down on ISIS jihadists who have been territorially defeated, but still manage to plan and carry out attacks in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

    “CENTCOM forces conducted a raid in northeast Syria targeting a senior ISIS official,” spokesman Colonel Joe Buccino said in a statement sent to CBS News and other outlets, adding that more information would be provided once “operational details” were confirmed.

    Syria’s state broadcaster said a U.S. airborne operation involving multiple helicopters left one person dead and saw several others captured in a government-controlled area of Syria’s northeast, which is mostly dominated by Kurdish forces who were long U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS.

    The targeted village, Muluk Saray, sits only about 10 miles south of the Kurdish-held city of Qamishli, and is controlled by pro-regime militias, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group that relies on an extensive network of contacts inside Syria.

    Thursday’s raid was the first such airborne operation conducted in government-held territory since the start of Syria’s war in 2011, the Observatory said, adding that the person killed in the operation “had been a resident of the area for years.”

    At least two people were captured alive in the operation, a Syrian and an Iraqi, the monitoring group said.

    A village resident told AFP that three U.S. helicopters carried the troops in for the operation. The resident said the forces raided a house, killing one person and taking several others captive.

    “They used loudspeakers to call on residents to stay indoors” during the operation, the resident said.

    The resident identified the victim as Abu Hayel, whom they said was not well known in the area but believed to have been displaced from Syria’s Hassakeh province.


    Head of ISIS terror group dead after overnight raid in Syria

    07:46

    The United States leads an international military coalition still battling ISIS in Syria. In July, the Pentagon said it had killed Syria’s top ISIS jihadist in a drone strike in the northern part of the country. CENTCOM said he had been “one of the top five” ISIS leaders.

    The July strike came five months after a nighttime U.S. raid in the town of Atme, which led to the death of the overall ISIS leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi. U.S. officials said Qurashi died when he detonated a bomb to avoid capture.

    After losing their last territory following a military onslaught backed by the U.S.-led coalition in March 2019, the remnants of ISIS in Syria mostly retreated into desert hideouts. They have since used such hideouts to ambush Kurdish-led forces and Syrian government troops, while also continuing to mount attacks inside Iraq.

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  • Kabul suicide bombing: Attack on school in Afghanistan’s capital leaves many dead, mostly young women

    Kabul suicide bombing: Attack on school in Afghanistan’s capital leaves many dead, mostly young women

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    AFGHANISTAN-BLAST
    Relatives and medical staff remove a wounded girl from an ambulance outside a hospital in Kabul, September 30, 2022, following a suicide blast at a learning center in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Afghanistan’s capital.

    AFP via Getty


    Kabul — A suicide bomb attack on a school hall packed with hundreds of students preparing for exams in the Afghan capital on Friday killed at least 30 people, hospital sources told CBS News. Most of the casualties were said to be young women as the blast ripped through the Kaaj Higher Educational Center, which coaches mainly young adults ahead of university entrance exams.  

    “We were around 600 in the classroom. But most of the casualties are among the girls,” Akbar, a student who was wounded in the attack, told AFP from a nearby hospital.

    The bombing happened in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of western Kabul, a predominantly Shiite Muslim area home to the minority Hazara community, the target of some of Afghanistan‘s most deadly attacks.

    “Students were preparing for an exam when a suicide bomber struck at this educational center. Unfortunately, 19 people have been martyred and 27 others wounded,” Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said.

    AFGHANISTAN-BLAST
    Taliban fighters stand guard near the site of suicide bomb attack at a learning center in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, Afghanistan, September 30, 2022.

    STR/AFP/Getty


    A shopkeeper from the area said there was a loud explosion and then crowds of students rushed out of the center.

    “It was chaos as many students, boys and girls, tried to escape from the building. It was a horrific scene. Everyone was so scared,” he told AFP anonymously.

    In a Facebook post, Mukhtar Mudabir, a teacher and director at the education center, said attackers first shot and killed its security guards at the entrance gate and then opened fire, wounding two more people before the suicide bomber detonated an explosives vest inside the hall where the students were gathered. He said he lost his own sister, Um al-banin Asghari, in the attack, and that most victims were young women. 

    A source at Kabul’s Ali Jenha hospital told CBS News’ Ahmad Mukhtar that the bodies of 28 victims and 32 wounded students were brought to the facility after the blast. He shared a list of victims that showed most were female. 

    In a tweet, an emergency health facility run by Italian medics said it had “received 22 victims in our hospital, mostly women between 18 and 25.” The Emergency hospital said two of the victims brought in had died, one before they arrived.

    Videos posted online and photos published by local media showed bloodied victims being carried away from the scene.

    “Security teams have reached the site, the nature of the attack and the details of the casualties will be released later,” Abdul Nafy Takor, the interior ministry’s spokesman, earlier tweeted. “Attacking civilian targets proves the enemy’s inhuman cruelty and lack of moral standards.”

    Families rushed to area hospitals where ambulances arrived with victims and lists of those confirmed dead and wounded were posted on the walls.

    “We didn’t find her here,” a distressed woman looking for her sister at one of the hospitals told AFP. “She was 19 years old… We are calling her but she’s not responding.”

    Taliban members forced families of victims to leave the site of at least one hospital, fearing a follow-up attack on the crowd.  

    By Friday afternoon the Taliban allowed journalists to visit the educational center.

    The roof of the hall where students had gathered for a test had completely collapsed, while its doors and windows were blown out, an AFP correspondent reported.

    Municipal workers were cleaning the floor, but still some patches of dried blood and pieces of flesh lay scattered.


    Many Afghans living in fear, one year after U.S. troops withdrew from America’s longest war

    09:12

    The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last year brought an end to the two-decade war and a significant reduction in violence, but security has begun to deteriorate in recent months.

    Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazaras have faced persecution for decades, with the Taliban accused of abuses against the group when they first ruled from 1996 to 2001.

    Such accusations picked up again after they swept back to power.

    Hazaras are also the frequent target of attacks by the Taliban’s enemy, the Afghan affiliate of the ISIS group. Both groups consider Hazaras heretics.


    Afghanistan’s rulers try to modernize police force after a spate of deadly ISIS-K attacks

    03:53

    Many attacks have devastated the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, with several targeting women, children and schools. Last year, before the Taliban returned to power, at least 85 people — mainly female students — were killed and about 300 wounded when three bombs exploded near their school in the area.

    No group claimed responsibility, but a year earlier ISIS claimed a suicide attack on an educational center in the same neighborhood that killed 24, including students.

    In May 2020, the group was blamed for a bloody gun attack on a maternity ward of a hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi that killed 25 people, including new mothers.

    And in April this year, two deadly bomb blasts at separate education centers in the area killed six people and wounded at least 20 others.

    Education is a flashpoint issue in Afghanistan, with the Taliban blocking many girls from returning to secondary education. ISIS also stands against the education of women and girls.


    Afghan women and girls struggle for basic human rights under Taliban rule

    08:52

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