Terrorism

A 23-year-old Oklahoma man has been arrested after he tried to blow up a bank in downtown Oklahoma City using a vehicle bomb similar to the one that destroyed the federal building there in 1995, federal officials said Monday. The man, Jerry Drake Varnell, had been plotting the attack for …

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany on Monday of assisting terrorists by not responding to thousands of files sent to Berlin or handing over suspects wanted by Turkish authorities. “Germany is abetting terrorists,” Erdogan told a conference in the Black Sea province of Rize, in comments likely to further escalate …

The Pentagon is considering a plan that allows the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes on ISIS in the Philippines, two defense officials told NBC News. The authority to strike ISIS targets as part of collective self-defense could be granted as part of an official military operation that may be named …

President Donald Trump has become increasingly frustrated with his advisers tasked with crafting a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and recently suggested firing the war’s top military commander during a tense meeting at the White House, according to senior administration officials. During the July 19 meeting, Trump repeatedly suggested that …

Militant group Islamic State on Monday claimed responsibility for an attack on the Iraqi embassy in Kabul that began with a suicide bomber blowing himself up at the main gate, allowing gunmen to enter the building and battle security forces. The assault came a week after 35 people were killed …

The Saudi Ministry of Interior has announced that a major terrorist attack was prevented by security services in the city of Saihat in the Qatif governorate. On the evening of Friday, July 14th, security services intercepted a stolen Toyota Corolla vehicle in a busy, built-up district of the city. As …

By Farhana Qazi We live in unpredictable times and many people I’ve met are struck by anxiety and fear of not knowing when the next attack will take place, which is why I have given lectures on how to live fearlessly in an age of terrorism to general audiences. Fear is …

The four Arab nations leading a boycott of Qatar are no longer insisting it comply with a list of 13 specific demands they tabled last month. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt told reporters at the UN they now wanted it to accept six broad …

France’s armed forces chief resigned on Wednesday in a dispute with Emmanuel Macron over defense budget cuts, an early test of the newly elected president’s mettle and the tough presidential style he is cultivating. In a statement, 60 year-old Pierre de Villiers said he had tried to keep the armed …

The head of Islamic State in Afghanistan, Abu Sayed, was killed in a strike on the group’s headquarters in Kunar province earlier this week, the Pentagon said on Friday. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement that other members of the Islamic State group were also killed in the …

A suicide bomber rammed a car laden with explosives into a gathering of jihadist rebels near the rebel-held northwestern Syrian city of Idlib on Wednesday, killing and injuring scores, rebel sources said. They said the blast ripped a textile factory where members of Hayat Tahrir al Sham, an alliance of …

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ended talks with ministers from Saudi Arabia and three Arab allies on Wednesday over how to end a month-long rift with Qatar but there was no immediate word of a breakthrough. Tillerson, en route to mediating country Kuwait, had inked a U.S.-Qatari accord on …

An Army sergeant has been arrested in Hawaii and charged with seeking to provide classified military documents and training to ISIS, according to court records unsealed Monday. Sgt. Ikaika Erik Kang, 34, an air traffic control operator with the 25th Infantry Division at U.S. Army Pacific Command, was taken into …

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday backtracked on his push for a cyber security unit with Russia, tweeting that he did not think it could happen, hours after his proposal was harshly criticized by Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted. Trump said on Twitter early on Sunday that …

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul on Sunday and congratulated the armed forces for their “victory” over Islamic State after nearly nine months of urban warfare, bringing an end to jihadist rule in the city. Islamic State’s defeat in Mosul three years after taking the city is a …

Dozens of religious leaders boarded a bus on the Champs Elysees in Paris on Saturday to kick off a European tour of the sites of recent Islamist attacks to remember the victims and condemn violence.    Imams from countries including France, Belgium, Britain and Tunisia were joined by representatives of other …

The United States, Russia and Jordan have agreed to foster a cease-fire in a limited area of southwestern Syria that will begin at noon on Sunday, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said on Friday after the first face-to-face meeting between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. …

African powers launched a new multinational military force to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel on Sunday, which French President Emmanuel Macron told a regional summit should be fully operational by the autumn despite its current budget shortfall. Some observers see the initiative of the G5 Sahel bloc – Mali, …

Eight people have been injured in a shooting outside a mosque in southern France, officials have confirmed. Worshippers leaving the Arrahma mosque in Avignon were approached by two hooded suspects at about 22:30 local time (21:30 GMT) on Sunday. The suspects, carrying a handgun and a shotgun, arrived in a …

Three car bombs exploded in Damascus on Sunday, state media reported, and seven people were killed in one of the blasts, a police officer said, the biggest such attack in the Syrian capital since a series of suicide attacks in March. One of the suicide bombers blew himself up in …

Bombers killed two people and wounded 11 others at a U.N.-managed camp in Niger housing thousands of people who have fled Boko Haram violence in the first suicide attack in the region in a year, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday. Two women entered the camp in Kabelawa, around …

Legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is challenging the Trump administration’s version of events surrounding the April 4 “chemical weapons attack” on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun – though Hersh had to find a publisher in Germany to get his information out. In the Sunday edition of Die Welt, Hersh reports that his …

On June 20, the US central command announced the death of the Islamic State ideologue Turki Mubarak Binali which the extremist group’s official networks also confirmed. Binali’s death is a significant victory in the ideological war against IS. Who is Turki Mubarak Binali? The Islamic State is reeling under its …

A federal judge halted late on Monday the deportation of all Iraqi nationals detained during immigration sweeps across the United States this month until at least July 10, expanding a stay he imposed last week. The stay had initially only protected 114 detainees from the Detroit area. U.S. District Judge Mark …

President Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday dismissed calls for Turkey to close a military base in Qatar and said a wider list of demands issued by four Arab states was an unlawful intervention against the Gulf emirate’s sovereignty. In his strongest statement of support for Qatar in the nearly three-week-old crisis …

Faced with a sweeping set of demands, Qatar insisted Friday it can indefinitely survive the economic and diplomatic steps its neighbors have taken to try to pressure it into compliance, even as a top Emirati official warned the tiny country to brace for a long-term economic squeeze. Given 10 days …

A terror plot to attack the Grand Mosque in Mecca has been foiled by security forces, the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry announced on Friday, Al Arabiya TV and state television Al-Ekhbariya report. According to the spokesman, the attack was planned by three terror groups, two based in Mecca and the …

The Supreme Court handed a setback to the Trump administration on Thursday by making it harder for the government to strip immigrants of U.S. citizenship in a case involving an ethnic Serb woman who lied about her husband’s military service after Yugoslavia’s collapse. The justices ruled 9-0 that a naturalized …

Asked to respond to the shootdown of a Syrian fighter jet over Syria, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the United States will protect its interests in Syria and will “do what we can” to keep open lines of communication with Russia and Syria. “And so we’ve gotta do …

The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) raised its threat level on Wednesday, saying it had become aware of more serious terrorism-related projects and plans in Finland. “The most significant terrorist threat in Finland is still posed by individual actors or small groups motivated by radical Islamist propaganda or terrorist organizations …

By Mirwais Harooni and Josh Smith | KABUL for REUTERS –  A powerful bomb exploded in the morning rush hour in the center of Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 80 people, wounding hundreds and sending clouds of black smoke into the sky above the presidential palace and foreign embassies. …

Exclusive for THE LEVANT NEWS – By General(ret) Elias Farhat* —     Executive summary i-There is much talk about terrorism, but little action. Some of the measures taken have not been sufficient , while others either raise suspicions as to their real aims or are clearly supportive of terrorist …

By Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD — Nobody’s interested in what happened in Egypt, internationally, the suicide attacks that targeted the churches in Tanta and Alexandria on Palm Sunday last week. A foreign academic explained this to me. It wasn’t high on the priorities of international readers. This is tragic, not …

By Philip Pullella | VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis condemned a deadly blast at a church in Egypt and said at a Palm Sunday Mass that the world was suffering from wars, terrorism and “interests that are armed and ready to strike”. Francis, who has not made any direct public comment …

By Daniel Bates For Dailymail.com — Smouldering with flames after being stuck by a hijacked  passenger plane, these newly released images show the Pentagon right after the 9/11 attacks. The photos, which were made public by the FBI, were taken in the hours and days after al Qaeda terrorists unleashed hell …

By Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard for Reuters| BEIJING – Vowing to plant their flag in China and that blood will “flow in rivers”, a video released this week purportedly by the Islamic State group shows ethnic Uighur fighters training in Iraq, underscoring what Beijing sees as a serious threat. …

The Levant News — Syria’s army and allied forces advanced inside Palmyra on Thursday after ISIS pulled most of its forces back from positions inside the ancient desert city, a war monitor reported. The Syrian army, backed by Russia’s air force and Shi’ite militias supported by Iran, is attempting to …

The Levant News — ISIS fighters from China’s Uighur ethnic minority have vowed to return home and “shed blood like rivers” in what security experts said marked the first such threat against Chinese targets. The threat came in a half-hour video released Monday by a division of Islamic State of …

by Dr. Haytham Mouzahem — In the space of three months, Syria’s rebel factions have lost their stronghold in Aleppo, fled to Idlib and witnessed the election of a new US president who’s as reluctant to help them as the outgoing one – if not more so. So what better …

A convoy carrying the prime minister of Libya’s U.N.-backed government and the two leaders of an allied parliament and presidential guard came under fire in Tripoli on Monday, but none of the three men were harmed, officials said. A spokesman for the U.N.-backed government, Ashraf Tulty, said the motorcade had …

By Rao Komar, Christian Borys and Eric Woods, Foreign Policy: Heavily armed and expertly kitted with body armor and ballistic helmets, the men can be seen defending bunkers, storming buildings, and even posing by whiteboards giving tactical lessons. Though the titles of these YouTube videos are written in Russian Cyrillic, …

By Richard Spencer for THE TIMES — Saudi Arabia has expelled 39,000 Pakistanis in the past four months amid what it says is a crackdown on terrorism, according to the Saudi Gazette. Most deportations were for standard visa violations, reported the English-language daily newspaper, published in Jedda. However, officials were …

The Levant News — “The Islamic State” group (ISIS)claimed responsibility Tuesday for a truck attack at a Christmas market in Berlin that killed 12 people and injured 48 others. German police are still hunting for the driver of the truck. “The executor of the operation … in Berlin is a …

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN – Reuters — Four Jordanian policemen were killed in clashes with Islamist militants near the southern city of Karak on Tuesday as the authorities hunted militants who killed 10 people on Sunday, security officials said. Two days earlier police tackled gunmen holed up inside a …