Terrorism Watch Update

November 18, 2015
A female suicide bomber blew herself up and another terrorist died early this morning when the French police raided an apartment in the Paris suburb of St. Denis as part of the ongoing manhunt for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian Islamist accused of masterminding the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. Later in the day, sources close to the investigation claimed that the suspected Islamist terrorists uncovered in the raid on the apartment in St. Denis were planning an attack on Paris’ La Defense business district. One Islamic State fighters was killed and 21 other were detained today when the group attempted to illegally cross the border from Syria to Turkey. The head of Germany’s police forces said today that the ranks of potential Islamist attackers are growing, noting that about 750 German citizens have traveled to Syria and Iraq and that about a third of them have returned. German Chancellor Angela Merkel today called the decision to cancel a soccer match yesterday between Germany and the Netherlands “responsible,” after German intelligence warned of specific indications that an attack with explosives was planned at the site. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said today that air strikes carried out by French jets and other forces killed at least 33 Islamic State fighters in the terrorist group’s de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa over the past three days. U.S.-led air strikes have hit at least 175 targets in the Islamic State’s main oil-producing region over the past month in an apparent stepped up campaign the Pentagon has dubbed “Tidal Wave II.” A suspected Boko Haram carried out a bloody attack on Tuesday evening in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola, killing 32 and wounding 80 others at a fruit and vegetable market.

November 17, 2015
France and Russia both carried out air strikes against Islamic State targets in northern Syria today, hitting positions in and around the terrorist group’s de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa. British finance minister George Osborne said today that his country’s intelligence services are building elite cyber offensive forces to strike at Islamic State fighters and hackers. The Syrian army seized the village of al-Hadath in western Syria from the grips of the Islamic State today, retaking territory in an area where the terrorist group had recently advanced near a strategic north-south highway. German police arrested five people, including three foreign citizens, in the western city of Aachen today in an operation linked to the terrorist attacks last Friday in Paris. The Austrian interior ministry announced today that the country’s police are trying to track the movements of a suspect in Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Belgian-born Frenchman Salah Abdeslam, who allegedly entered the country from Germany in early September and told authorities he was on holiday. French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said today that French police conducted 128 overnight raids as part of their investigation into the Islamic State terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday that left at least 129 people dead. European security officials told the media today that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the 27-year-old Belgian man suspected of being the mastermind of the Paris terrorist attacks, was a target of Western air strikes on the Islamic State in Syria as recently as last month. A senior Tunisian government official said today that his country has arrested a cell of 17 Islamist militants and prevented a major assault on hotels and security forces in the resort town of Sousse planned for this month. The U.S.-led coalition carried out 23 air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq on Monday, including targeting oil facilities used by the terrorist group. Nine suspected Boko Haram fighters armed with sophisticated weapons who sneaked into Maiduguri were arrested on Monday by Nigerian authorities.

November 16, 2015
In a new video released by the Islamic State today, the terrorist group boasts about the Paris attacks and vows “we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington.” French authorities raided homes of suspected Islamist militants across the country overnight, arresting a total of 23 people and seizing arms, including a rocket launcher, while also noting that a Belgian national in Syria was the possible mastermind of Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris. According to statements by Belgian prosecutors today, five of seven suspects arrested in Brussels during the weekend over possible links to the Paris attacks have been released. A senior Turkish government official said today that his country notified France twice in December 2014 and June 2015 about one of the Paris attackers named Ismael Omar Mostefai. Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, said today that it had killed leaders of an insurgent group allegedly linked with the Islamic State, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades, in a suicide bombing of its headquarters. Moroccan authorities arrested four people today suspected of belonging to a militant cell linked to the Islamic State in the central city of Beni Mellal. French jets carried out heavy air strikes overnight, hitting two Islamic State training camps as well as a suspected arms depot in and around the terrorist group’s de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa. A California State University student, Nohemi Gonzalez, who was studying design in France was confirmed to have been killed in the Paris attacks on Friday night, making her the first known American casualty of the Islamic State terrorist attacks that killed a total of 129 people. The U.S.-led coalition conducted 23 air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday, including hitting 115 fuel trucks near the eastern city of Abu Kamal. The United States carried out a fresh delivery over the weekend of ammunition to fighters from the Syrian Arab Coalition battling the Islamic State in northern Syria, marking the second time the U.S. has moved to arm the group. The U.S. military said on Saturday that it launched an air strike the day before targeting the Islamic State’s senior leader in Libya, Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi, and believes that he was likely killed in the city of Derna.

November 13, 2015
U.S. officials announced this morning that an air strike in the Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa on Thursday probably killed Mohammed Emwazi, a.k.a. Jihadi John, the 27-year-old British executioner who had appeared in videos showing the beheadings of American and British hostages, including U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley. Kurdish peshmerga forces backed by U.S. air strikes took back the Iraqi town of Sinjar from the Islamic State today, over a year after the terrorist group seized the town and began ethnically cleansing its Yezidi residents. The Iraqi military claimed today that its forces have advanced on Islamic State positions in the western city of Ramadi, despite reports that police and government officials said that the progress was extremely slow. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack at the funeral of a pro-government Shiite Muslim fighter in Baghdad today, resulting in the deaths of at least 18 and wounding 41 others. The U.S. State Department today designated Maghomed Maghomedzakirovich Abdurakhmanov a terrorist, on charges that the 41-year-old Russian born man leads a branch of the Islamic State known as Jamaat Abu Banat. Italy boosted security at Jewish sites in Milan today following the stabbing of an Israeli Jew yesterday by an unknown assailant near a Jewish school in the city. A Palestinian terrorist shot and killed 2 Israelis in the southern West Bank today as they were traveling near the Jewish settlement of Otneil close to Hebron. A U.S. military statement reported that the U.S. and its coalition allies carried out 44 air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq on Thursday. At least 43 people were killed and more than 240 wounded on Thursday in a double suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State that targeted a crowded residential district in Beirut long considered a stronghold of Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.

November 12, 2015
Italian authorities announced today that police in 6 European countries arrested at least 15 suspected members of an Islamist militant group that was planning attacks in Norway and the Middle East. Turkish police arrested 11 suspected Islamic State members in helicopter-backed raids across Istanbul today as part of a series of operations against the terrorist group’s presence in the country ahead of the G20 summit. Kurdish peshmerga forces started clearing parts of the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar this morning and established positions along a vital Islamic State supply route between the terrorist group’s de facto Syrian and Iraqi capitals, Raqqa and Mosul. The Syrian army and allied forces broke the Islamic State’s nearly 2 year long siege of the Kweiris air base in Aleppo province on Wednesday, marking the Assad’s regime biggest success since Russia’s intervention in late September. An estimated 25 people were killed on Wednesday in a Boko Haram attack on a village in southern Niger and the ensuing clashes between the terrorist group and the Nigerien army. Kenyan military officials said on Wednesday that their forces destroyed 5 camps used by militants linked to al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al-Shabaab in a sweep of the Boni Forest on the north coast. The U.S. State Department on Tuesday announced rewards for information leading to the identification or location of 6 senior leaders of al-Shabaab, including a $6 million reward for information on the whereabouts of the groups emir, Abu Ubaidah Ahmad Umar.

November 10, 2015
Israeli security guards shot a Palestinian terrorist dead after he ran towards them with a knife near Jerusalem’s Old City today shortly after 2 Palestinian boys, aged 12 and 13, stabbed a guard on a nearby tram. Turkish police arrested 18 individuals today suspected of recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front, including 2 women and a number of people who crossed into Turkey after being wounded in the fighting in Syria. Iraqi officials reported today that Islamic State fighters rounded up dozens of young men for posting pictures and videos online about life in the terrorist group’s de-facto Iraqi capital of Mosul. The Chadian government on Monday declared a state of emergency in the Lake Chad region on the heels of a series of raids and suicide bombings there by Boko Haram. The Egyptian interior ministry announced on Monday that a senior figure in the Islamic State’s so-called Sinai Province, Ashraf Ali Hassanein al-Gharabli, was killed during a shootout with police in Cairo. The U.S.-led coalition conducted 31 air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq on Monday, targeting the terrorist group’s oil supply, fighting positions, and artillery.

November 9, 2015
Two American military personnel and 1 South African were killed this morning when a Jordanian officer went on a shooting spree at a U.S.-funded security training facility near Amman, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of al-Qaeda’s suicide bombing attacks at three hotels in the Jordanian capital. Israeli security officers shot dead a Palestinian female terrorist who tried to stab them today at a West Bank checkpoint, only one day after a Palestinian driver met the same fate when ramming his car into a bus stop in the West Bank and injuring 4 people. Islamic State fighters kidnapped and killed 7 people, including 3 women, in Afghanistan’s southern Zabul province on Sunday amid heavy fighting between the group and Taliban insurgents. A twin Boko Haram suicide bombing carried out by women attackers in the area of Lake Chad on Sunday killed 2 people and wounded 14 others according to Chadian security sources. In an intensification of the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State, coalition forces carried out 31 strikes in Syria and Iraq on Saturday and a total of 56 against Islamic State targets in Syria alone between October 30th and November 6th. Bombs across Baghdad on Saturday killed at least 9 people, including 5 members of the Iraqi security forces, in attacks suspected to be the work of Islamic State terrorists. The Islamic State released 37 elderly Assyrian Christians who were among about 200 kidnapped by the terrorist group in February in northeastern Syria following mediation by Arab tribal elders. British media outlets reported over the weekend that the Tunisian leader of an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, Mehdi Ben Nasr, was smuggled into Europe posing as a refugee in October before being arrested and deported to Tunisia.

November 6, 2015
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported today that Russian air strikes killed 42 people in the Islamic State’s de-facto Syrian capital of Raqqa earlier this week, including 27 civilians. Turkish authorities arrested 20 people suspected of links to the Islamic State today in the southwestern province of Antalya as part of a police crackdown against the terrorist group’s network in the country. The U.S. Department of the Treasury on Thursday sanctioned 2 individuals and 4 companies who are part of Hezbollah’s procurement channel in support of the Lebanese-based group’s military capabilities and acts of terrorism. Four Ohio residents were indicted on Thursday on charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), allegedly traveling to Yemen in 2009 to provide thousands of dollars to radical preacher and AQAP commander Anwar al-Awlaki in an effort to support violent jihad against the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State carried out 23 air strikes on Thursday against terrorist targets in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State released a video on social media this week in which armed fighters are shown handing out candy to groups of people, including children, in celebration of the downing of the Russian plane in the Sinai on Saturday for which the terrorist group has claimed responsibility.

November 5, 2015
British authorities said today that there is a significant possibility that the Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate was behind a suspected bomb attack on a Russian airliner that killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday. Bahrain sentenced 5 individuals to life imprisonment today and stripped their citizenship on charges of conspiring with Iran to carry out attacks inside the country, just 1 day after Bahraini authorities arrested 47 suspects believed to be part of an Iranian-linked terrorist network. In a statement this morning, France’s presidency announced that the country’s Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier will be deployed to support operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Niger’s air force bombed a Boko Haram base in the country’s southeast today and arrested more than 20 terrorists, marking the country’s biggest counter terrorism operation in months. Husein Bosnic, a Bosnian cleric known as the unofficial leader of the ultra-conservative Salafi movement in Bosnia, was sentenced to 7 years in jail today for recruiting fighters to join the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack that took place on Wednesday morning at a checkpoint near the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka that left one police officer dead and another wounded. The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State carried out 23 air strikes on Wednesday against the terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.

November 4, 2015
The Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate dismissed doubts today that it downed a Russian passenger plane over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, saying “we…are the ones who brought it down, and we are not obliged to disclose the mechanism of its demise.” The Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate also claimed responsibility today for a car bombing this morning targeting a police club in the city of El Arish which killed 6 people and wounded 10 others. The U.S.-led coalition carried out 25 air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Tuesday, targeting an explosive facility, weapons caches, and terrorist units among other targets. Nine alleged members of the Islamic State believed to have been preparing a suicide bombing attack in Istanbul were remanded in custody by a court in southeast Turkey on Tuesday. The Taliban claimed to have killed Zaman Mehsud, a Pakistani journalist who also worked for the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in the northwestern town of Tank on Tuesday, saying “we killed him because he was writing against us.” Heavy fighting erupted on Tuesday night and continued into early Wednesday morning between Ethiopian troops allied with the Somali government and fighters from al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al-Shabaab near Beledweyne city close to the Somali-Ethiopian border.

November 3, 2015
Three Moroccan-born Spanish residents were arrested today in Madrid on suspicions of being Islamic State members and preparing attacks in Spain, including knife attacks like those recently conducted by Palestinian terrorists against Israelis. Boko Haram released a series of photos today allegedly showing a rocket manufacturing factory in northeastern Nigeria, suggesting that the members of the Islamist terrorist group have the technical know-how to fashion their own artillery. In a video released on Monday, members of Boko Haram are seen severing the right hands of 2 men alleged to have stolen money. The U.S.-led coalition conducted 22 air strikes against the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria on Monday, hitting targets including weapons caches, Islamic State headquarters, and a tunnel system. Three Palestinian terrorists attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians with knives on Monday, including an 80-year old woman in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon Lezion who is in critical condition. The Islamic State claimed responsibility yesterday for the killing of 2 Syrian activists in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa last Friday. In a video message released by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) on Monday, senior commander Khaled al-Batarfi reiterates al-Qaeda’s rejection of the Islamic State caliphate and criticizes the Islamic State for ignoring the Palestinian cause as well as for dividing the jihadi factions instead of uniting them against both the U.S. and Russia. Afghan officials claimed over the weekend that Bilal al-Tayibin, a senior al-Qaeda commander, along with 2 of his bodyguards were killed in a U.S. drone strike on the evening of October 29 in northeastern Afghanistan.

November 2, 2015
In an audio message released on Sunday, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Muslims “from East Turkestan to Morocco” to unite against the U.S., Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in both Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State seized control of the western Syrian city of Maheen on Sunday after fierce clashes with government forces, bringing the terrorist group about 13 miles away from the strategic north-south highway linking Damascus to Syria’s other major cities like Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. At least 2 soldiers and 11 Boko Haram fighters were killed on Sunday as the Nigerian Islamist group attacked 2 remote military posts in the Lake Chad area. Fighters from al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al-Shabaab assaulted a hotel in Mogadishu on Sunday, detonating at least 2 bombs and exchanging fire with security forces for several hours in an attack that left 13 people dead. Turkey’s state-run news agency reported on Sunday that Turkish and U.S. air strikes in Syria killed more than 50 Islamic State fighters and wounded about 30 the previous day. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Russian passenger plane crash in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Saturday that killed over 220 people on board, although investigators have not yet concluded that terrorism was the cause. A rocket fired by fighters loyal to the Islamic State hit a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 6 worshippers and wounding 4 others.

October 30, 2015
According to a U.S. military statement released today, the Operation Inherent Resolve coalition conducted 11 air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and one in Syria on Thursday, targeting fighting positions, weapons, as well as a mortar system. Palestinian terror stabbing attacks against Israelis continued today, wounding a total of 5 people including 2 suspected Palestinian assailants at an Israeli police checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus and at a light rail station in east Jerusalem. The commander of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim al-Mukhtar Army militia claimed responsibility today for yesterday’s deadly rocket attack on Camp Liberty near Baghdad which killed 23 members of an Iranian exile group, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran. Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen and British resident, was freed today from Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and transferred to the UK after more than 13 years in captivity for alleged involvement in al-Qaeda. The top U.S. commander for Africa, Gen. David Rodriguez, said on Thursday that Boko Haram has lost territory in Nigeria since 2014 but warned that its ties to the Islamic State represent a growing threat to the civilian population in that country and the region. Unidentified warplanes carried out air strikes targeting Islamic State-controlled areas in Libya’s Sirte city yesterday, marking the second barrage of strikes against the terrorist group’s strongholds in that North African city this month. U.S. officials announced yesterday that coalition air strikes in Syria have killed former German rapper Denis Cuspert, a.k.a. “Deso Dogg,” who had participated in propaganda videos for the Islamic State and sought to persuade foreigners to the terrorist group.

October 29, 2015
Pentagon officials announced today that Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz, a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison, was transferred to Mauritania after unanimous approval from the prison’s review board. Indian security forces in Kashmir killed Abu Qasim today, the most wanted militant in the area who was a top commander of the Islamist terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The head of Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency said today that Islamic State terrorists are planning mass casualty attacks in his country, noting that the current level of threat to the UK is the highest he has seen in his entire career spanning 32 years. Israeli forces today shot and killed 2 Palestinian terrorists, one who stabbed a soldier and another who attempted a similar attack, in the West Bank city of Hebron. Israel sentenced Raed Salah, an influential sheik and preacher of the Islamic Movement, to 11 months in jail on Tuesday for incitement that led to violent demonstrations at the Temple Mount in 2007. The Islamic State released a social media strategy manual this week, titled “Oh Media Correspondent, You Are The Mujahid,” published in both Arabic and English which instructs the terrorist group’s followers on how to properly use social media and “deliver the message of the Caliphate for the entire world.”

October 28, 2015
According to press reports, the Taliban overran Takhar province in northern Afghanistan, seizing the district capital of Darqand early today in a continuing offensive that has intensified since this summer. Turkish prosecutors said today that they have strong evidence that an Islamic State cell in Gaziantep carried out the double suicide attack in Ankara that killed more than 100 people earlier this month. The Nigerian army said today that it rescued 338 people held captive by Boko Haram and raided camps belonging to the terrorist group in the Sambisa forest in northeastern Nigeria. Meanwhile, a suspected Boko Haram attack killed at least 14 people in an overnight attack on a village in southeastern Niger. Islamic State fighters on Tuesday cut off a crucial supply line for the Syrian regime connecting Aleppo to neighboring Hama province and onward to the central city of Homs and the capital Damascus. The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State carried out 14 air strikes against targets belonging to the terrorist group in Iraq on Tuesday. At least 4 people were killed by bomb blasts in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Samarra on Tuesday in attacks believed to be the work of the Islamic State. A Libyan man was sentenced in the UK on Tuesday to 6 years for terrorism offenses and other charges related to a failed plot to send ammunition to militias operating inside Libya.

October 27, 2015
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter testified before the Armed Services Committee today that the U.S. is intensifying pressure on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by supporting local forces with an expanded air campaign and occasional direct action on the ground. The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State carried out 12 air strikes against the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria on Monday, including directly hitting targets near Ramadi which has been held by the Islamic State since May. A 76-year-old American-Israel educator, Richard Lakin, died today of injuries inflicted by a Palestinian terror stabbing and shooting attack on a Jerusalem bus 2 weeks ago. Turkish police arrested 71 people today in raids targeting Islamic State supporters in Istanbul and other cities, while the army claimed that it detained 17 militants attempting to cross into Syria. Pakistan says 7 of its soldiers were killed today in the South Waziristan tribal region by fire from across the border with Afghanistan, a known operating space for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. Islamic State fighters executed 3 detainees in the historical Syrian city of Palmyra on Monday by strapping them to pillars and blowing them up along with the antiquities, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. One of the Islamic State’s Saudi affiliates, al-Hijaz Province, claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide bombing in the southern Saudi city of Najran which killed at least 2 people and injured a dozen others at an Ismaili Shiite mosque.

October 26, 2015
Early Monday morning 12 ISIS militants were captured alive, while 2 Turkish policemen and 7 Islamic State militants were killed in a firefight after police raided more than a dozen houses in Turkey's southeast. A Monday morning suicide bombing, that has yet to be claimed, killed 7 people (including 2 police officers) and injured 23 others in an attack on a Shi'ite Muslim procession in a northern Baghdad neighborhood. Yesterday, Kenyan Defense Forces troops killed 15 al-Shabaab fighters in a raid to capture a base and disrupt militant supply lines 180 kilometers (112 miles) inside Somalia. At least 3 women, including a 9-year-old girl, were wounded in an attack by Al-Shabaab militants on a military base belonging to the Ethiopian troops in Bardere city's airport on Sunday. On Sunday, Nigeria’s secret police announced they have arrested and charged 45 suspects over an alleged Boko Haram plot to attack the country's financial hub, Lagos. Yemeni officials announced on Sunday that suspected al-Qaeda militants have broken into a main prison in the government-held southern port city of Aden, freeing a militant suspected of carrying out an August attack on a compound belonging to the city's former governor. A senior spiritual leader of the al-Shabaab militant group in Somalia, which earlier this year massacred close to 150 Christian students, has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terror group in Iraq and Syria. Over the weekend, ISIS released footage of militants killing a captured Syrian solider by running him over with an army tank. The Nigerian Amy announced the destruction of over 20 Boko Haram camps and enclaves in Kerenowa and Chikun Gudu through an operation that is still ongoing. Throughout the weekend Nigerian officials warned civilians to stock up on water while the military investigates a plot by Boko Haram to poison water sources in northeast Nigeria.

October 23, 2015
At least 20 people were killed and 11 wounded today in 2 bomb attacks suspected to be the work of Boko Haram at mosques in Nigeria’s northeast. Cameroonian soldiers clashed with Boko Haram fighters today, following the Nigerian terrorist group’s attack yesterday on a village in Cameroon’s Far North Zone that left at least 12 people dead. The Pentagon announced the name of the U.S. commando killed in a special operations raid yesterday in Iraq against the Islamic State: 39-year-old Master Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler of Roland, Oklahoma. A senior commander of al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al-Shabaab and 20 of his followers pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in an audio tape published on YouTube yesterday. The United States and its coalition partners carried out 16 air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Thursday, hitting fighters, weapons, and other targets near 7 cities in Iraq as well as an oil field in Syria that generates between $1.7 and $5.1 million per month for the terrorist group. The European Union and 17 members of the Council of Europe signed an agreement yesterday that seeks to thwart the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, criminalizing travelling abroad for terrorism as well as funding and facilitating terrorist travel.

October 22, 2015
A U.S. Special Forces operation rescued about 70 Kurdish hostages in northern Iraq from the Islamic State today and resulted in the death of 1 U.S. serviceman, marking the first U.S. combat fatality in the fight against the terrorist group. A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry today expressed her government’s growing concern about the concentration of Islamist terror groups in northern Afghanistan along the borders with Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Palestinian terrorists stabbed a Jewish seminary student today near Jerusalem as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for talks in Berlin to discuss ways to stem the bloodshed. The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State targeted the terrorist group with 22 air strikes in Syria and Iraq on Wednesday, according to the Combined Joint Task Force leading the operation. Bahrain charged 24 individuals of trying to set up a branch of the Islamic State in the country on Wednesday as well as for possession of weapons and conducting training in the use of explosives. U.S. military officials told the media on Wednesday that an al-Qaeda training camp in southern Afghanistan that was the target of a major raid last week had been operating since last November, but that the U.S. did not learn the full details about the site until July. A Boko Haram raid into a village in northern Cameroon on Wednesday resulted in the deaths of 8 villagers and wounded 9 others. An attack believed to be carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan Islamist group, killed 6 people in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday.

October 20, 2015
The Russian defense ministry said today that it has carried out 46 sorties and struck 83 “militant” targets in Syria in the past 24 hours. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is in Moscow today meeting with Russian President Valdimir Putin to discuss the 2 allies’ ongoing efforts against the Islamic State and other militants in Syria. British authorities arrested 4 people this morning suspected of preparing to commit an act of terrorism and terrorist fundraising. A day after his victory in Canada’s national elections, Pierre Trudeau told President Obama by phone on Tuesday that he intends to withdraw his country’s jets from the U.S.-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. According to a State Department report released this week, the Islamic State made over $1 billion in revenues in 2014 and captured up to $50 billion worth of Iraqi weapons. The Islamic State posted notices on buildings throughout their de facto Syrian capital of Raqqa this week calling on all males over the age of 14 to register their names and addresses with the police by Thursday, prompting fears of possible military conscription by the terrorist group.

October 19, 2015
The Russian defense ministry reported today that Russian planes carried out 33 sorties and hit 49 Islamic State targets in Syria over the past 24 hours. The United Kingdom launches its new counterterrorism passport policy, allowing parents concerned that their 16 and 17-year old children are at risk of traveling abroad under the influence of extremists to apply to have their passports revoked. The Pentagon confirmed on Sunday that it killed Sanafi al-Nasr, a senior al-Qaeda strategist plotting attacks against the U.S., in an airstrike in Syria on October 15. The Islamic State released a series of videos on Sunday bearing such titles as “Project Behead the Jews,” glorifying the recent wave of deadly Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis. In another recently released video produced by the Islamic State’s Libyan affiliate, a man accused of spying is dragged to death behind a utility vehicle in the city of Derna. An air strike on an Islamic State convoy in the Syrian province of Hama on Saturday killed at least 40 members of the terrorist group and destroyed 16 vehicles, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Suspected Boko Haram attackers killed 12 villagers in Nigeria’s northeastern Adamawa state on Saturday night.

October 16, 2015
Palestinians set fire to the Jewish shrine of Joseph’s tomb near Nablus overnight and stabbed an Israeli soldier near Hebron several hours later in the latest episode of violence engulfing Israel and the Palestinian territories. Security sources in Lebanon say that rockets fired by Hezbollah killed 5 Islamic State fighters in the Bekaa Valley in northern Lebanon today. A senior Russian military officer told the media today that Russia may use its ships in the Mediterranean Sea to fire missiles at Islamic state militants in Syria. Twelve people have been reported killed in Yemen’s western port city of Hodeidah today as a result of a suicide bombing and assault by gunmen on an intelligence building carried out by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). At least 36 people were killed in multiple suicide attacks suspected to have been carried out by Boko Haram last night and this morning which targeted a mosque and a residential building on the outskirts of the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri. U.S. federal prosecutors have charged Ardit Ferizi, a citizen of Kosovo based in Malaysia, with hacking the personal information of more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel and federal employees and handing over the information to the Islamic State. Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency closely linked to the Taliban, reported that a U.S. drone strike on October 13 in eastern Afghanistan killed Jalaluddin, the Islamic State Khorasan Province’s mufti or senior religious and legal scholar.

October 15, 2015
The Russian defense ministry claimed today that its air force has hit 32 Islamic State positions in Syria in the past 24 hours, including a firing position in Damascus equipped with a surface-to-air missile system. Iraqi forces and the Shiite militia fighters of the Popular Mobilization Units recaptured most of the country’s largest oil refinery in the city of Baiji today from Islamic State militants who have been in control of the city since June 2014. The Obama administration is expected to announce today a reversal in Afghanistan, slowing down plans to withdraw U.S. troops and maintaining a force of 5,500 troops into 2017. An Egyptian court today acquitted the younger brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri of charges related to the formation and leadership of a terrorist organization. A video released yesterday by Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist group urges Somalia’s al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab to abandon the terrorist network led by Ayman al-Zawahiri and pledge allegiance to the Islamic State. President Obama said yesterday that he ordered 300 U.S. troops to Cameroon to collaborate with West African soldiers on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the fight against Boko Haram.

October 13, 2015
Three Israelis were killed and dozens injured in a series of Palestinian terror attacks today, including a shooting and stabbing attack on a bus in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front, called on his followers today to carry out attacks in Russia in retaliation for Moscow’s airstrikes in Syria which he dubbed a ‘crusade.’ Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said today that the Islamist insurgent group is retreating from Kunduz, the strategic northern city which fell to the Taliban last month, in order to avoid further civilian casualties. The Iraqi military said on Sunday that its air force bombed a meeting of Islamic State fighters, killing eight senior figures and also reportedly hitting a convoy which Iraqi officials claimed was carrying Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Afghani Taliban claimed credit for a suicide attack on Sunday that targeted a convoy of the NATO-led force in Kabul and wounded at least 7 Afghan civilians. Twin blasts rocked a large peace rally in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Saturday, killing nearly 100 people in an attack the Turkish government has blamed on the Islamic State.

October 9, 2015
The Obama administration has suspended the Pentagon’s $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels, acknowledging that the program has failed to produce a meaningful ground force to combat the growing strength of the Islamic State in Syria. The Russian defense ministry said today that its air force has hit 60 Islamic State targets in last 24 hours in Syria. Despite a Russian air and sea campaign allegedly targeting the terrorist group, the Islamic State has seized villages close to the strategic city of Aleppo in northern Syria just 1 mile away from government-held territory. French jets carried out their second air strike in Syria today, reportedly striking a training camp in the Islamic State’s Syrian capital of Raqqa. Al-Qaeda’s Somali branch, al-Shabaab, has released a photo report this week detailing last month’s attack on a Somali military camp in the Lower Shebelle region in which 15 Somali soldiers were reportedly killed. Afghan security officers reportedly shot dead 2 would-be suicide bombers at a Kabul restaurant on Thursday. The Taliban overran 2 more districts in northern Afghanistan this week, making the Islamist insurgent group currently in control of 31 of Afghanistan’s 398 districts.

October 8, 2015
The website of a college in Limerick, Ireland was reportedly hacked by the Islamic State this morning and displayed the words “Ireland Expect Us” above the terrorist group’s black flag. Kurdish officials said yesterday that blood samples from 35 peshmerga fighters revealed traces of sulfur mustard and confirmed that Islamic State fighters fired mortar rounds containing the mustard agent in battles in northern Iraq. An Islamic State propaganda video released this week featured the killing of 3 Assyrian Christian captives, allegedly killed 2 weeks ago on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, who were among nearly 200 Christians abducted earlier this year in northeastern Syria. Boko Haram released a new video message on Wednesday in which the terrorist group claimed that its elusive leader, Abubakar Shekau, is still alive and in charge of the group. Suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers killed 17 people in 3 attacks in the northeastern Nigerian city of Damaturu on Wednesday. Palestinian terrorists attacked Israelis across the country on Wednesday in 4 separate attacks that included 2 knife stabbings.

October 7, 2015
Russian warships in the Caspian Sea fired missiles at alleged Islamic State targets in Syria today, and officials in Moscow claimed that 112 targets belonging to the terrorist group have been hit by Russian forces since Sept. 30. The head of the Iraqi parliament’s defense and security committee said today that his government may request Russian air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and expressed a desire for a bigger role for Moscow than Washington in Iraq. Fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab terrorist group ambushed and killed the nephew of Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud in Mogadishu today. The Nigerian military said that its forces killed over 100 Boko Haram fighters this morning as they attempted to attack an army base in Yobe state. Media reports indicated today that authorities in Eastern Europe, in coordination with the FBI, have disrupted four attempts in the past 5 years by criminal networks to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, including a case this past February when a smuggler specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State. A Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli man in his back near the Lion’s Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, marking the second such attack at the historic site in under a week. Congressman Ted Poe, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, introduced H.R. 3693: The IRGC Terrorism Sanctions Act of 2015 on Tuesday which requires the Treasury Department to issue a report detailing whether Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps meets the criteria for terrorism designation.

October 6, 2015
Syrian state TV reported today that Russian jets hit Islamic State targets in the city of Palmyra and the northern province of Aleppo, reportedly destroying 3 weapons depots, 20 vehicles, and killing 15 Islamic State fighters. The Combined Joint Task Force announced today that the U.S. and its allies carried out 24 air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq on Monday. Taliban fighters are stilled holed up in Afghanistan’s northern city of Kunduz, carrying out hit-and-run attacks on Afghan fighters more than a week after the Islamist insurgent group briefly seized the city. Tunisian authorities broke up 3 alleged Islamic State recruitment cells today and arrested 11 individuals suspected of trying to join the terrorist group’s Libyan affiliate. Eleven Chadian soldiers and 17 suspected Boko Haram fighters were killed in a pre-dawn cross-border attack carried out by the terrorist group this morning. In related news, Nigerian troops have reportedly arrested a suspected Boko Haram financier today who sold and supplied stimulants used by the Islamist insurgents. A series of car bombings across Iraq, at least one of which was claimed by the Islamic State, killed at least 57 people on Monday. Over the weekend, al-Qaeda announced the death of Algerian jihadist leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar who was responsible for an attack on an Algerian gas plant in 2013 that killed 38 foreign hostages.

October 5, 2015
Afghan forces have reportedly regained control of most of the city of the northern city of Kunduz today following intense clashes since last week when Taliban insurgents seized the city. Despite Russian claims that its jets are bombing Islamic State positions in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said today that Moscow is “taking military action in Syria against moderate groups targets,” effectively escalating the civil war. Meanwhile, the Russian defense ministry said today that Russian military jets have carried out strikes on 9 Islamic State sites in Syria in the past 24 hours. Syria’s antiquities chief announced on Sunday that Islamic State fighters have blown up the Arch of Triumph, a major monument in the ancient Roman city of Palmyra which has been controlled by the terrorist group since May. Seventy members of the Sunni Arab Albu Nimr tribe were shot dead on Sunday night by the Islamic State in Iraq’s Anbar province because they had relatives serving in the Iraqi security forces. The Islamic State’s West Africa Province, another name for Boko Haram, claimed credit yesterday for suicide bombings on Friday near the Nigerian capital Abuja which killed 15 people. Suspected Boko Haram fighters also killed 3 civilians and a soldier in a cross-border double suicide attack in Niger on Sunday. Spanish and Moroccan authorities arrested 10 people on Sunday on suspicion of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State. Israel has launched a security crackdown following a spike in Palestinian terrorist incidents in the past week, including a stabbing on Saturday evening in Jerusalem’s Old City that left a rabbi and a soldier dead and wounded a woman and her toddler.

October 2, 2015
On the third day of airstrikes in Syria, Russian jets continued bombing areas mainly held by rival insurgent groups in north and west Syria rather than the Islamic State fighters Moscow claims to be targeting. However, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed today that airstrikes have destroyed an Islamic State command center and rebel training camp. Some Taliban fighters are holding out against Afghan troops supported by U.S. and NATO forces in Kunduz today, while the Islamist insurgents have also reportedly seized control of a district in northeast Afghanistan on Thursday evening after heavy clashes. The Taliban has also claimed responsibility for downing a U.S. military transport plane in eastern Afghanistan just after midnight, killing 6 American troops and 5 contractors, however U.S. military officials deny that enemy fire was the cause of the crash. A 15-year-old British boy convicted of plotting an attack on a World War One commemorative event in Australia was handed a life sentence today, making him the youngest Briton to be convicted of a terrorism offense. Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called today for a global war against the Islamic State saying that “terrorists target with their ideology all humanity, its culture and morals.” Palestinian terrorists shot and killed an Israeli couple traveling with their 4 young children in the West Bank on Thursday night, just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly that he was willing to immediately restart stalled peace negotiations. Islamic State fighters attacked forces guarding one of Libya’s main oil ports on Thursday with a gun assault and an attempted car bombing which left 1 guard dead and 2 more wounded. Suspected Boko Haram attacks on 3 villages in the northeastern Nigerian state of Adamawa on Wednesday night left 11 residents dead.

October 1, 2015
Russian jets carried out a second day of air strikes in Syria today, targeting areas held by Syrian rebels including a group linked to al-Qaeda, but not the Islamic State. The afghan army aided by U.S. and NATO forces recaptured the city center of Kunduz today following its seizure by Taliban forces 3 days ago. Israeli security services announced today that they arrested three people in northern Israel accused of plotting attacks for the Islamic State in August. A German court today convicted a 22-year-old man of joining the Islamic State in Syria and fighting for the terrorist group in at least 1 battle. Congressman Ted Poe, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, introduced H.R. 3654 on Wednesday, which would require the U.S. Administration to craft a comprehensive strategy to counter terrorists’ growing use of social media platforms. Katibat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (KTJ), a mainly Uzbek group that formally pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra earlier this week, claimed responsibility yesterday for an attack on “Russian infidels” in Syria’s western Latakia province. A new Islamic State propaganda video released on Wednesday shows 10 Kurdish peshmerga soldiers reciting their final prayers before they are all decapitated in an apparent warning to Iraq’s Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani. In a video released on Tuesday by al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) senior commander Khaled al-Batarfi calls on Muslims and terrorist groups worldwide to support fighters in Palestine and make attacking the U.S. a top priority.

September 29, 2015
The U.S. military launched an airstrike this morning in Kunduz to help clear the way for Afghan army reinforcements to retake the city which fell to Taliban forces yesterday. Following a request from the British government, the United Nations imposed sanctions on 4 British citizens fighting with the Islamic State in Syria who are actively involved in the terrorist group’s recruitment efforts. The U.S. and its allies carried out 12 air strikes in Iraq and 5 in Syria against Islamic State targets on Monday. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting death of an Italian aid worker in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka late on Monday, marking the terrorist group’s first attack in the South Asian country. Iraqi officials said on Monday that the country would be open to granting Russia over flight rights to carry out reconnaissance missions in Iraqi air space in order to gather intelligence on Islamic State targets. A U.S. Central Command spokesman said on Monday that the New Syrian Forces officer who surrendered U.S.-supplied weapons to al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate was not trained by the U.S. A video released by Boko Haram shows the group’s followers praying and celebrating the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest.

September 28, 2015
Afghan Taliban fighters seized most of the city center of Kunduz today, hoisting their flag only about 200 meters from the governor’s compound and marking the first major breach of a provincial capital since 2001. Security forces in Saudi Arabia today killed 2 suspected Islamic State militants and arrested 3 others in coordinated raids in the capital Riyadh and the eastern city of Dammam. British Prime Minister David Cameron said today that his country will deploy more than 300 troops for U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia and South Sudan including up to 70 personnel to support African Union forces combating al-Shabaab militants. Reports on Sunday indicated that Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq are working together on intelligence and security cooperation to counter the Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. France said on Sunday that it launched its first airstrikes in Syria, destroying an Islamic State training camp in the country’s east. Afghanistan carried out a wave of airstrikes on Sunday that reportedly killed over 80 Islamic State militants in response to attacks by Islamic State gunmen at checkpoints in eastern Afghanistan that killed 3 policemen earlier in the day. Nine people were reported killed and 10 others wounded in a Boko Haram attack on Mailari village in northern Nigeria on Sunday. U.S. Central Command confirmed on Friday that a commander of the new batch of U.S.-trained Syrian rebels surrenders some of his unit’s equipment to al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage within their operating area.

September 25, 2015
Security sources in Niger today reported that Boko Haram fighters raided the southern village of N’Gourtoua overnight, shooting dead or slitting the throats of at least 15 people. According to the U.S. military, the United States and its partners carried out 22 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State on Thursday. Authorities in Saudi Arabia say terrorists opened fire at 2 police checkpoints in the northern Hail province on Thursday killing at least 3 people. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday that the Islamic State has executed more than 10,000 men, women and children in Iraq and Syria since June 2014. The U.S. embassy in Malaysia warned American citizens on Thursday to avoid a popular tourist street in the capital of Kuala Lumpur due to “credible threat information regarding a potential terrorist attack.”

September 24, 2015
The Islamic State claimed credit for a double suicide attack at al-Balili Mosque in the Yemeni capital of Sana'a this morning that resulted in the deaths of at least 10 and wounded 36 others. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported today that the Assad regime used newly arrived Russian warplanes to bomb Islamic State targets in Aleppo province in northern Syria. In related news, the Russian government said this morning that it was ready to begin anti-Islamic State coordination with the U.S. in Syria, while also saying that Moscow would not hesitate to move forward alone either. The U.S. military said this morning that American and allied forces have carried out 20 air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since Wednesday, including 3 strikes on the terrorist group's facilities in Mosul used in the production of vehicle-borne IEDs. Reports on Wednesday suggested that the group of U.S.-trained fighters who crossed into Syria earlier this week have lost contact with 1 of their officers and they are investigating suspicions that he defected and handed over his weapons to al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. The Nigerian military announced on Wednesday that it had rescued 241 women and children in a raid on 2 camps controlled by Boko Haram in the villages of Jangurori and Bulatori. Somali military officials said Wednesday that at least 10 members of the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab terrorist group were killed in intense clashes in southern Somalia.

September 22, 2015
Yemeni officials reported this morning that 2 suspected members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) were killed in a U.S. drone strike last night targeting their vehicle in the central province of Marib. German police carried out dawn raids this morning in Berlin targeting individuals suspected of inciting people to go fight for the Islamic State in Syria. At least 17 people were killed in and around Baghdad on Monday in 4 bombings, 1 of which was claimed by the Islamic State. Al-Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a vehicle borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) detonated on Monday at the gate of the presidential palace in Mogadishu that killed at least 4 people and wounded a dozen others. The head of Indonesia’s national counterterrorism agency warned yesterday that the Islamic State was working to bring foreign fighters into the country via Malaysia. In a new propaganda video, Islamic State fighters wield long knives as they force a group of Western hostages to kneel on the dirt and proceed to threaten to carry out a cyber attack against the United Kingdom. According to press reports, the Boko Haram attack in Maiduguri on Sunday night involved 4 explosions detonated within 25 minutes and killed more than 100 people.

September 21, 2015
At least 54 people have been reported killed and 90 others wounded in a series of bombings in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Sunday evening bearing the hallmarks of Boko Haram. Two suicide bombers killed 3 people in northern Cameroonian town of Mora on Sunday in yet another suspected Boko Haram attack. At least 2 people were reported injured in a suspected Islamic State bombing targeting a middle-class neighborhood of Cairo on Sunday. The Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, reportedly executed at least 56 Syrian soldiers over the weekend who were captured earlier this month when the terrorist group overran the Abu Al-Duhur airbase in northern Idlib. A report released by Human Rights Watch on Sunday claimed that 2 Iranian-backed Shia militias, Kataib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, committed egregious abuses after taking Tikrit from the Islamic State earlier this year, destroying homes, businesses, and property in a rampage that led to the disappearance of 160 residents.

September 18, 2015
Syrian military jets carried out at least 25 air strikes on the Islamic State-held city of Palmyra today in what is being called one of the most sustained government bombardments of the historic city that was seized by the terrorist group in May. Russia’s First Deputy Director of Federal Security said today that his government believes about 2,400 Russians are fighting with Islamic State militants and accused the United States of not cooperating fully in the fight against the terrorist group. Six militants wearing explosives belts suspected of belonging to the Islamic State attacked a prison in the Libyan capital of Tripoli today in a failed attempt to free prisoners. Ali Saleh, a 22 year old man from Queens, NY, appeared in a federal court in Brooklyn on Thursday morning where he faced charges for allegedly trying to join the Islamic State in August 2014. Though the number of Islamic State members in Afghanistan is not fully known, media reports suggest that the group has forced 57 schools in the country to close, leaving about 30,000 children out of education. A small team of about 20 U.S. Special Operation Forces are quietly helping Niger build a wall against Boko Haram’s incursions and its recruitment in the country’s southeastern Diffa region. The Iranian government released 5 senior members of al-Qaeda, including an operative named Saif al-Adel who reportedly oversaw the terrorist network immediately after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, as part of a prisoner swap in March with al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen in return for an Iranian diplomat.

September 17, 2015
At least 32 people were killed and 68 others were wounded in 3 terrorist attacks in predominately Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad today, 2 of which were claimed by the Islamic State. Pakistani authorities arrested a businessman and former air force pilot today in Karachi who donated funds to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda and was involved in influencing 2 militants who participated in an attack on a busload of Shiite Muslims in May that killed 45 people. The al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab terrorist group claimed responsibility for a bombing today in a military camp in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo resulting in the deaths of at least three off-duty Somali soldiers as they arrived to collect their salaries. General Lloyd J. Austin III, the top American commander in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that only 4 or 5 Syrian fighters trained by the U.S. remain in the fight against the Islamic State and that the goal of training 5,000 fighters would not be met anytime soon. In a new propaganda video, Islamic State fighters tell Syrian and Iraqi refugees that they will fare better under their self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ than in Europe where they will face ‘humiliation.’ Saudi Arabian authorities carried out raids on 2 alleged terrorist cells on Wednesday in eastern Riyadh and in the central village of Dhurma, reportedly uncovering an explosives workshop as well as an explosive belt.

September 16, 2015
According to the Taliban’s website, the family of late Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar announced their support for the group’s new leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour following weeks of power struggles within the Afghani insurgency. Australian forces carried out their first operation in Syria, destroying an Islamic State armored personnel carrier just 1 week after the Australian government agreed to its expand airstrikes from Iraq into Syria. France has decided to join air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria, citing the terrorist group’s advances in Aleppo and along the Homs-Damascus line as well as its growing efforts to carry out attacks in Europe. According to media reports on Tuesday, the FBI arrested a 15-year-old boy in Philadelphia last month for allegedly plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack targeting the Pope. In a new audio message released just days following the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri calls on Muslims everywhere to launch attacks on the United States and the “countries of the crusader coalition.” The Islamic State also released a video celebrating the 9/11 attacks earlier this week titled “We Are Back in America” in which the terrorist group promised to deliver “cars full of explosives and suicide bombers.” CIA director John Brennan said on Tuesday that al-Qaeda remains a major long-term national security threat and could regain global prominence despite the rise of the Islamic State over the past year. Nigeria’s military announced on Tuesday that its forces rescued at least a dozen kidnapped women and children held captive by Boko Haram fighters in northeastern Borno state.

September 15, 2015
Six terrorists were killed in Pakistan this morning after the militants opened fire during a raid by the local police and Counter Terrorism Department; 2 more escaped but officers were able to recover a large quantity of arms and explosive material. Pope Francis has warned that ISIS terrorists could try to “infiltrate” Europe by hiding among the thousands of refugees and migrants entering from countries like Syria and Libya. Similarly, Lebanese Education Minister Elias Bou Saab told British Prime Minister David Cameron that he believes 1 in 50 migrants are members of ISIS, which was “more than enough” to bring unprecedented death and chaos to European countries. Heavily armed Taliban fighters wearing military uniforms stormed a major prison in Afghanistan yesterday, battling security forces and freeing 355 prisoners—148 of them considered terrorists. Eleven terrorists were killed and 51 suspects arrested on the 8th day of an extensive Egyptian army operation in North Sinai; the operation also resulted in the destruction of 55 hotbeds, 63 explosive devices, 3 vehicles, 26 unlicensed motorcycles, four underground shelters, and the seizure of ammunition and weapons.

September 14, 2015
On Saturday, Egyptian security forces killed 12 people and injured 10 more after mistaking the tourist group—traveling through Egypt’s Western Desert in vehicles unauthorized for tours and without proper trip permits—for militants. New recorded messages from Ayman al-Zawahiri have been released where the al Qaeda leader says that, although he still believes the ISIS caliphate is illegitimate, all jihadists in Iraq and Syria should cooperate in the face of a common enemy. Robert Ford, former American ambassador to Syria, said Sunday that it is the brutality of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and not ISIS, that has forced about 4 million Syrians to flee their homeland. Two suspected terrorists with links to Boko Haram and ISIS have been charged with throwing acid in the faces of 2 British teenagers volunteering in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 2013. A bomb hidden in a tent exploded on Friday at Nigeria’s largest refugee camp, killing at least 7 residents, including 5 children, and wounding at least 20; Boko Haram is suspected in the bombing. Boko Haram is also suspected in a coordinated attack by three suicide bombers in Kolofata, Cameroon that killed 7 and severely injured 18 on Sunday. Meanwhile, Nigerian troops claim Boko Haram terrorists are surrendering in droves thanks to new strategies like sustained offensive operations, pre-emptive air strikes by the Nigerian Airforce, and route blocking by ground troops. Indonesian authorities have linked an Australian man to $500,000 they suspect has been funnelled through his wife’s account in Indonesia to support terrorism and send Indonesian nationals to Syria to fight with ISIS.

September 11, 2015
Today marks the 14th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in which about 3,000 Americans perished. The U.S. is sending an additional 75 troops and other assets to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to support international peacekeepers who have come under recurrent attacks by Islamist terrorists including the Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate. China’s Foreign Ministry said today that a Chinese citizen allegedly held by the Islamic State appears to be one of it missing citizens. U.S. officials claimed today that they identified at least 4 occasions on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border where the Islamic State has used mustard agents and said that the a research cell within the terrorist group is most likely manufacturing the chemical agent. The Afghan Taliban’s new leader, Mullah Mansour, is reportedly sending envoys to senior Taliban members in the Middle East in an effort to shore up support for his leadership in the face of a brewing rebellion coalescing around the late Taliban leader’s brother and son. The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated 4 Hamas leaders on Thursday, including the head of the terrorist group’s headquarters in Turkey Saleh Arouri, as Specially Designated Nationals, triggering sanctions on the 4 Hamas terrorists. According to Yemeni officials, 4 suspected members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) were killed in a U.S. drone strike near the city of al-Mukalla in southeastern Yemen late on Wednesday.

September 10, 2015
The Islamic State detonated at least 2 car bombs today during clashes at strategic air case in eastern Syria near Deir al-Zor in which at least 18 soldiers and 23 Islamic State fighters have been reported killed. In an audio message released on Wednesday, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri condemns the Islamic State for dividing the jihadi community and calls its self-proclaimed caliphate illegitimate. Norway’s Prime Minister confirmed on Wednesday that her government received a ransom demand for the release of a Norwegian national kidnapped in Syria by the Islamic State, confirming earlier claims published in the Islamic State’s English-language magazine that the terror group is holding a Norwegian and a Chinese citizen. A young man from Fort Lee, New Jersey who pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday to planning to travel to Syria in order to join the Islamic State faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released English-language magazines on Wednesday praising the September 11 attacks just 2 days before the 14th anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Al-Qaeda’s English-language magazine also called for lone-wolf terrorist attacks on U.S. economic leaders, including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffett.

September 9, 2015
A major air base in northwestern Syria fell today to Islamist-led insurgents including al-Qaeda’s affiliate the Nusra Front following a 2-year siege by Syrian rebel factions. In a newly released video, Islamic State fighters are shown forcing 2 Iraqi men accused of being Shiite spies to watch a fuse from a stick of dynamite burn down as they await their certain death in the ensuing explosion. German prosecutors today charged a 25-year-old German man with joining the Islamic State during a trip to Syria in October 2013.The al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab terrorist group announced today that it is holding Ugandan troops hostage after an attack last week on the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) base, although Kampala has denied this claim. The Nigerian military said on Tuesday that it had made several arrests after the interdiction of a vehicle carrying fuel and drugs believed to be intended for Boko Haram militants. Afghani officials said on Tuesday that a U.S. drone strike in eastern Afghanistan killed a senior Taliban commander known as Zarqawi along with his bodyguard.

September 8, 2015
Intense clashes between Islamic State fighters and Syrian government forces broke out today at dawn at Syria’s Jazal oilfield northwest of Palmyra, the last such facility that is still partly under state control. Islamic State fighters in Iraq reportedly executed 27 fellow extremists accused of conspiracy in Nineveh province by electrocuting the accused in a city prison. Britain announced on Monday that it had conducted a drone strike for the first time in Syria, killing 3 suspected members of the Islamic State, including 2 British citizens. Just hours later, the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan released a video welcoming the allegiance of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and featuring a beheading of a purported member of the Afghan security forces. U.S. defense officials told the press that they are drawing up plans to revise the training of moderate Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State following “significant shortcomings” in the program. The al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab terrorist group released a series of pictures over the weekend from a suicide attack and raid on an African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) base in Mogadishu that took place early this month resulting in the deaths of at least 50 peacekeepers. Al-Shabaab fighters also took control of 3 towns in Somalia this weekend following the retreat of African Union forces.

September 4, 2015
Saudi Arabian security forces reportedly killed a terrorist suspect who attempted to attack a security facility on Friday in the country’s oil producing Eastern Province. Syria’s antiquities chief announced today that the Islamic State has blown up three ancient tower tombs in Palmyra dating from 44 to 103 AD, the latest in a string of Islamic State attacks against historic sites in the ancient city. Iraqi security services conducted an overnight raid at the headquarters of a powerful Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia, Kata’ib Hezbollah, following suspicions that the militia was holding 18 Turkish workers abducted on Wednesday from a sports stadium in northeastern Baghdad. Boko Haram fighters crossed the border from Nigeria into Cameroon yesterday and staged a series of attacks that killed about 30 people and wounded 145 others. The Islamic State’s Caucasus affiliate claimed credit for an attack on a Russian military barracks in Dagestan, marking the affiliate’s first claim of responsibility for an attack since pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in June.

September 3, 2015
Security officials in Indian-administered Kashmir reported that at least 5 suspected militants were killed early this morning in 2 clashes with the Indian military. The Islamic State affiliate in Yemen claimed responsibility for 2 bombings yesterday that took place at a mosque in the country’s capital of Sana’a and left at least 32 people killed and 92 wounded. A new propaganda video released by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq appears to show the terrorist group’s fighters brandishing American-manufactured M16 rifles. The Pentagon reported yesterday that Islamic State fighters have retaken much of the territory liberated by Iraqi security forces in the strategic city of Baiji, home to Iraq’s largest oil refinery. Reports indicate that Boko Haram gunmen on horseback killed dozens of villagers in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state on Monday morning.

September 2, 2015
Three Pakistani police officers were killed and several more were wounded today in a failed police operation on a Pakistani Taliban hideout in Peshawar. Reports indicated yesterday that the CIA and U.S. Special Operations forces have been engaged in a secret campaign to hunt and kill terrorism suspects in Syria separate from the broader U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State. A series of Islamic State attacks on Tuesday, including mortar shelling and suicide bombings, killed 12 Iraqi soldiers near the town of Haditha. A Turkish soldier was killed and another reported missing on Tuesday following cross-border fire from Islamic State controlled territory in Syria. Kuwait charged 26 individuals on Tuesday of terror links to Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah as well as plotting attacks on targets in the country. A U.S. drone strike on Tuesday night killed 5 militants, including several Uzbeks, in North Waziristan, marking the first drone strike in Pakistan in nearly a month.

September 1, 2015
Both the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing today targeting a paramilitary vehicle outside a government compound in northwest Pakistan which killed at least 4 people and wounded dozens others. The Islamic State claimed credit today for a car bombing on the Mellitah oil and gas firm in the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Monday which resulted in only minor damage to the facilities. A newly released video by the Islamic State announces that the terrorist group has minted a new coin-based currency in an effort to deal a blow to the United States and its financial system. Al Shabaab fighters stormed an African Union base in southern Somalia early today, allegedly killing dozens of soldiers and claiming that they had taken control of the base. New details of Boko Haram’s wave of attacks in northeastern Nigeria over the weekend indicate that fighters on horseback killed at least 79 people in 3 different locations on Friday and Saturday.

August 31, 2015
The Islamic State blew up the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel in Palmyra on Sunday, marking the terrorist group’s latest attack on the ancient Syrian city’s historic sites. About 200 residents of the western Iraqi town of Rutbah were detained over the weekend by Islamic State militants following widespread demonstrations on Saturday protesting the killing of a local resident by the terrorist group. In a newly released Islamic State video, four members of a Shiite pro-government Iraqi militia in orange jump suits are burned alive while suspended by their hands, apparently in retaliation for the deaths of several Islamic State fighters earlier this month. In Syria, Islamic State forces are advancing towards the heart of Damascus today as they battle Syrian rebel forces in the capital’s southern Qadam district. The Somali police announced today that they have arrested several suspected members of the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab terror group, seizing their weapons and explosives in an operation in the country’s south. The governor of Nigeria’s Borno State said yesterday that Boko Haram fighters killed 56 villagers in Baanu village over the weekend.

August 21, 2015
Islamic State fighters demolished the Christian Mar Elian monastery today in the town of Qaryatayn that they seized earlier this month and transferred more than 100 captives from the town to their base in Raqqa, including prominent local priest Jacques Mourad. Three al-Qaeda militants were killed at dawn today in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen’s Marib province as they were riding in a vehicle in the desert region of Harib. Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abott, said on Thursday that authorities intercepted 7 Australians planning to travel to Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State from Sydney International Airport. In a newly released Islamic State video, fighters from the terrorist group are seen overrunning a military outpost near Fallujah in Iraq’s Anbar province, seizing tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles while displaying bodies of dozens of dead Iraqi security personnel. Recent social media posts by accounts affiliated with the Islamic State claimed that an American member of the terrorist group identified as Abu Abdullah al-Amriki was part of a group of suicide bombers that targeted locations in northern Iraq last week.

August 20, 2015
The Islamic State claimed credit today for a pre-dawn car bombing targeting a branch of Egypt’s domestic spy service, the National Security Agency, in the Cairo suburb of Shubra al-Kheima that wounded 29 people. The Islamic State also claimed credit today for an assault on a Yemeni government military outpost in the Thamud district near Saudi Arabia which killed 4 soldiers. Thai authorities said on Thursday that the bombing of Bangkok’s central Erawan shrine this week was unlikely to be connected to international terrorism. Saudi authorities executed 2 alleged Chadian al-Qaeda militants today for murder of a French engineer in the Red Sea city of Jeddah in 2004. According to Somali military officials, a joint operation with Ethiopian forces in the past 48 hours has killed at least 25 members of the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab group in the Hiran region of Somalia. The Nigerian military announced on Wednesday that its forces have arrested 2 key Boko Haram commanders in the town of Gaidam in northeastern Nigeria.

August 19, 2015
The Syrian government claimed today that the Islamic State beheaded Khalid al-Asaad, 82, one of the country’s most prominent antiquities scholars in Palmyra, hanging his body from an ancient column in the historic city whose restoration he had once supervised. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an Islamic State suicide bomber targeted a local police station in the predominately Kurdish town of Qamshili in northeastern Syria today, killing at least 11 people and wounding about 40 others. Pakistani officials said today that they killed 2 alleged operatives of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) identified as Abdul Ahad and Mohammad Sauleh in a shootout in Karachi. Reports from Nigeria say that as many as 60 people may have been killed in a Boko Haram attack on the village of Kukuwa in Nigeria’s Yobe state last Thursday.

August 18, 2015
Thai authorities said today that they were looking for a suspect seen on closed-circuit television footage near the site of yesterday’s bombing at the city center Erawan shrine which killed 22 people. An alleged Islamic State video message released today featured a Turk pledging allegiance to the terror group and urging his fellow countrymen to rebel against the government and conquer Istanbul. The Islamic State affiliate in Libya reportedly beheaded 12 local fighters yesterday who challenged their hold on the coastal city of Sirte, hanging the victims’ bodies on crosses as a show of power. Boko Haram fighters stormed the northeastern Nigerian village of Awonori on Monday morning, killing 7 people and looting grains and livestock before fleeing. Ethiopian military planes reportedly bombed several bases belonging to the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab in central Somalia on Monday, killing an unspecified number of fighters.

August 17, 2015
The Kuwaiti press reported on Sunday that a massive arms cache seized last week was smuggled into the country from Iran for use by an Iranian-backed Hezbollah cell. The Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra released 7 members of the U.S.-trained Division 30 rebel group on Sunday who were abducted by the terrorist outfit last month. Islamic State fighters carried out 3 suicide car bombings targeting Iraqi government forces outside Fallujah on Sunday, killing at least 17 troops and wounding 15 others. Over the weekend, the Iraqi army conducted a tactical withdrawal from areas around the town of Baiji, home to the country’s largest oil refinery, following an Islamic State counter-offensive in the area. In an audio message released on Sunday, the leader of the Nigerian-based terrorist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, denied claims by the Chadian president that Shekau had died and been replaced. Libya’s internationally recognized government appealed to Arab countries to carry out air strikes against the local Islamic State affiliate over the weekend as the terrorist group expanded its grip on the coastal city of Sirte. Late last week, news reports claimed that the head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had repeatedly raped American hostage Kayla Mueller after her abduction in Syria in August 2013.

August 14, 2015
Islamic State fighters launched a coordinated overnight assault on the outskirts of Iraq’s northern oil refinery town of Baiji, reportedly using 12 car bombs and more than 200 fighters in the offensive that left tens of security forces and Shiite militia fighters killed or wounded. Senior U.S. officials said Thursday that Islamic State militants likely used mustard agent against Kurdish forces in Iraq this week and suggested that the terrorist group might have obtained the chemical weapons from Syrian government stockpiles. In a newly released audio message, Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza gives strategies in continuing the global jihad. At least 37 people have been killed in the past 2 days in the central Libyan city of Sirte in clashes between Islamic State fighters and an Islamist group challenging the terrorist group’s grip on the city.

August 13, 2015
The Islamic State released an audio message today confirming that its members in Egypt have killed a Croatian hostage, a day after the group circulated a photograph of a beheaded corpse believed to be the Croat. The Islamic State also claimed credit for a truck bombing that rocked a market in a predominately Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad this morning, killing at least 62 people and wounding hundreds. In a newly released audio message circulated online, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri pledged allegiance to the new head of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour. A Nigerian man was sentenced to 22 years in a Federal District Court in Brooklyn, NY yesterday after pleading guilty in April 2014 to providing and conspiring to provide support to the Yemeni-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

August 12, 2015
The Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate circulated an image online today purportedly showing the beheading of a Croatian hostage held by the Islamic State after the terror group threatened to kill him last week if the Egyptian government did not release “Muslim women” from its prisons. A suspected U.S. drone strike in Yemen today killed 5 al-Qaeda members traveling in a vehicle near the eastern coastal city of Mukalla, which has been held by the terrorist group since April. The president of Chad claims that Abubakar Shekau, the head of Boko Haram, has been ousted as the terror group’s leader and replaced by Mahamat Daoud who is open to negotiations with the Nigerian government. A group of Islamic State supporters calling themselves “Islamic State Hacking Division” allegedly hacked into U.S. military computers on Tuesday and released the personal information of military and government personnel, announcing that “the soldiers of the caliphate…will strike at your necks in your own lands!” Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, a 21 year old resident of Aurora, CO who was arrested in 2013 as he was about to board a flight to Turkey, pled guilty yesterday to one count of attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

August 11, 2015
The British media outlet Sky News reported early today that British police and intelligence services are working to foil a plot by Islamic State terrorists in the country to detonate a pressure cooker bomb at a V-J day ceremony in London this weekend. At least 25 Syrian rebels were killed in 4 Islamic State car bombs overnight around the northwestern Syrian town on Marea as part of a new offensive against Syrian rebel positions north of Aleppo. The Islamic State also claimed credit for twin car bombings in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province yesterday that killed at least 58 and wounded more than 100 people. Two Mississippi residents were arrested over the weekend at an airport in the Columbus area on charges of attempting to travel abroad to join the Islamic State. The al-Qaeda linked terrorist group al-Mourabitoun has claimed responsibility for a hotel siege over the weekend in central Mali which resulted in the deaths of 17 people.

August 10, 2015
No injuries or deaths were reported this morning from a shooting attack at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul which occurred just hours after a suicide car bombing rocked a police station in another city neighborhood, injuring 3 policemen and 7 civilians. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a car bombing at the entrance of Kabul’s international airport today, killing 5 people and wounding 16 others. Islamic State militants carried out a car bombing in the eastern Libyan port city of Derna on Sunday, killing at least 7 people and wounding 19 others. The United States sent 6 F-16 jets and about 300 personnel to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base on Sunday in a sign of deepening cooperation between Washington and Ankara in the battle against the Islamic State in Syria. Suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed 4 people in a road ambush on Sunday in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno. In a newly released video, Islamic State fighters are seen burying several explosives in the ground in an undisclosed area of Afghanistan then forcing 10 blindfolded men to kneel and detonating the charges, killing all of the prisoners described by the terror group as “apostates.”

August 7, 2015
The Islamic State kidnapped at least 230 people, including scores of Christians some of whom were abducted from a church, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Boko Haram militants raided 2 villages in Nigeria’s Yobe state last night, killing at least 9 residents and burning down hundreds of homes just 2 days after the terrorist group kidnapped 135 residents of a village in northern Cameroon. Umm Sayyaf, the wife of the Islamic State’s head of oil operations Abu Sayyaf, was transferred to Iraqi custody yesterday after being held by the U.S. since May 15. The Yemeni-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) captured 3 towns near the southern port of Aden yesterday and blew up a 700 year old mosque affiliated with the mystical Sufi movement. The Islamic State’s newly established “Hijaz Province” claimed credit for yesterday’s suicide bombing at a mosque inside a police compound in southwestern Saudi Arabia that killed at least 15.

August 6, 2015
A suicide bombing rocked a mosque in the southwestern Saudi Arabian city of Abha today, killing 13 people and wounding 9 others. The Islamic State seized the strategic central Syrian town of Qaryatain today following heavy fighting with Syrian regime forces. African Union military warplanes launched airstrikes today against al-Shabaab training camps in central Somalia. Afghan officials reported on Wednesday that U.S. drone strikes in eastern Afghanistan killed up to 60 insurgents, many of whom were allegedly allied with the Islamic State. The Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, Sinai Province, released a video yesterday threatening to kill a Croatian hostage if authorities do not release Muslim women held in Egyptian prisons within 48 hours. The United States imposed sanctions on 2 Qatar-based al-Qaeda financiers on Wednesday who were involved in fundraising and collecting hostage ransom for the terrorist group’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front.

August 5, 2015
Clashes today between Iraqi government forces and the Islamic State east of Anbar’s provincial capital of Ramadi have left 17 troops dead and 9 others wounded. The Yemeni based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video and letter yesterday praising the recent lone-wolf attack in Chattanooga and calling for new attacks against the United States. At least 8 people were killed and about 100 abducted by suspected Boko Haram militants in raids on a village in northeastern Nigeria on Tuesday.

August 4, 2015
The Nusra Front captured at least 5 more U.S.-trained rebels in overnight raids on a village in northwestern Syria according to a statement today from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, bringing the number of American-trained rebels abducted by the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate to 13 out of the 54 deployed in mid-July.

August 3, 2015
Ten Malian soldiers were killed today in a terrorist attack on their camp in the Timbuktu region believed to have been carried out by fighters linked to Ansar Dine. On Sunday, Islamic State fighters executed 15 Iraqi police officers by rifle fire on a public square in Mosul and kidnapped four journalism students accused of collaborating with the foreign press. A spokesman for the Nigerian military announced yesterday that 178 people have been freed from Boko Haram captivity in raids that destroyed several camps in northeastern Nigeria. Pakistani authorities announced on Sunday that security forces killed senior al-Qaeda commander Umar Lateef and detained his wife in a hideout in southwestern Pakistan. Afghan officials confirmed on Sunday that senior Taliban commander Mawlawi Habib Rahman who heads the group’s military commission in Baraki Barak district of Afghanistan was killed in an airstrike.

July 31, 2015
Airstrikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition yesterday in Iraq have reportedly resulted in the deaths of the Islamic State’s deputy governor of Kirkuk province and 6 of his henchmen. U.S. government officials announced yesterday that according to recent indications, the English-speaking hooded ISIS executioner dubbed “Jihadi John” is alive and most likely hiding in or near the self-declared ISIS capital of Raqqa, Syria. Over the past 2 days, Nigerian soldiers have rescued 71 people, mostly women and children, from Boko Haram captivity in northeastern Nigeria.

July 30, 2015
Security officials in Kuwait announced today that they have uncovered a network of Islamic State militants who fought in Iraq and Syria and arrested some of its members. Two U.S. drone strikes last night in eastern Afghanistan killed 20 militants affiliated with the Islamic State.

July 29, 2015
Afghan officials announced today that Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban to whom al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri has pledged allegiance, is dead. This report is still unconfirmed at the moment and the Taliban has not confirmed nor denied the announcement.

July 28, 2015
At least 25 people have been in killed in suspected Boko Haram raids on 3 villages in Nigeria’s northwestern Borno state that took place on Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.

July 27, 2015
A 10 year old girl carried out a suicide bombing in a crowded market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Damaturu on Sunday, killing at least 16 people and wounding about 50 in a suspected Boko Haram attack.

July 24, 2015
Turkey launched air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria for the first time early today, hours after a Turkish soldier was shot and killed in the border by the terrorist group on Thursday.

July 23, 2015
The Islamic State claimed credit today for yesterday's bombings in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad that left at least 20 people dead. July 22, 2015
U.S. officials announced on Tuesday that Muhsin al-Fadhli, a senior member of al-Qaeda’s Khorasan group who formerly served as head of the al-Qaeda network in Iran, was killed in a drone strike in Syria on July 8.

July 21, 2015
On Monday night, U.S. officials reported that the FBI has found evidence that Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Abdulazeez was following radical American al-Qaeda cleric and recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki online in 2013. British prosecutors today charged 2 men in their twenties, Junead Khan and Shazib Khan, with intention of committing acts of terrorism after authorities revealed the 2 had tried to join the Islamic State and alleged that Junead was planning an attack on U.S. military personnel in the UK.

July 20, 2015
A massive explosion believed to have been carried out by the Islamic State killed at least 27 and left about 100 people wounded today at a park in the Turkish border town of Suruc where people gathered to call for more help to rebuild the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobani across the border. Iraqi security officials reported that Islamic State militants blew up a sports stadium used as a military base in Anbar province on Sunday as well as ambushed a military unit near the city of Fallujah, killing its commander. Saudi Arabia announced this past weekend that its security services have foiled planned Islamic State attacks in the country and arrested 431 individuals suspected of belonging to Islamic State cells.

July 17, 2015
A suspected Boko Haram attack today carried out by 2 female suicide bombers, including a 10-year old girl, killed at least 9 people at prayer services for the Muslim festival of Eid al Iftar in the Nigerian city of Damaturu.

July 16, 2015
The Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported on Thursday that Islamic State militants punished at least 94 people, including 5 teenagers, accused of violating the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan by flogging them, hanging them up by their arms, or locking them in metal cages.

July 15, 2015
Boko Haram fighters raided the border town of Damasak in Nigeria’s Borno state before dawn on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people. Security sources in Mali reported on Tuesday that authorities in the West African nation have detained 20 suspected Islamist extremist in recent days, including two French citizens and the organizer of a March attack on a restaurant in Bamako. Alexander Ciccolo, a 23-year old Boston police captain’s son, was ordered held without bail on Tuesday on suspicions of plotting to bomb a college cafeteria on behalf of the Islamic State. The Combined Joint Task Force, which leads air operations against the Islamic State, reported that the U.S.-led forces conducted 20 air strikes in Iraq against the Islamic State on Monday focused on the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, as well as 7 more in Syria.

July 14, 2015
Iraqi security officials reported today that Islamic State fighters booby-trapped a baby and remote detonated the explosives in front of dozens of armed men in Diyala Province on Friday as part of a demonstration showing how to handle explosives.

July 13, 2015
At dawn this morning, Iraqi troops and Shi’ite militias began an operation to liberate Anbar province from the grips of the Islamic State, two months after the terrorist group took the provincial capital of Ramadi.

July 10, 2015
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released a video on Thursday in which the terror affiliate’s new top leader, Qasim al-Raymi, renewed the group’s pledge of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri and vowed to continue waging jihad against the United States. In Nigeria, fighters from the Islamic State’s West Africa province, formerly known as Boko Haram, launched an attack on the northern town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state late on Thursday, and it is still unclear how the fighting concluded. Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey told the media that more than 10 people inspired by the Islamic State were arrested in suspected terrorist plots during the month and half leading up to the Fourth of July.

July 9, 2015
The Afghan Intelligence agency provided more details today of Tuesday’s U.S. drone strike in eastern Afghanistan, claiming that 5 Islamic State militants were killed as well as commander Shahidullah Shahid, making Shahid the third Islamic State commander killed in the country this week.

July 8, 2015
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that a drone strike as part of the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State killed a senior Uzbek leader of the group in Raqqa. According to local media reports, a U.S. drone strike also killed Gull Zaman, the Islamic State’s deputy emir for Khorasan province, on July 6 in eastern Afghanistan.

July 7, 2015
A bombing believed to be carried out by Boko Haram rocked the government headquarters in Nigeria’s northern university town of Zaria, killing 25 people including a 2-year old toddler.

July 6, 2015
Two bombings believed to have been carried out by Boko Haram rocked the central Nigerian city of Jos on Sunday night, targeting a mosque and a restaurant as the Ramadan fast drew to a close and resulting in the deaths of at least 44 individuals. In Nigeria, terrorists attacked Muslim targets in Nigeria on Sunday; a female suicide bomber blew up an evangelical Christian church service in Potiskum, killing 5; and militants attacked villages in the northeast, reportedly killing 9 residents and burning down 32 churches and about 300 homes.

July 2, 2015
A British woman was charged today of membership in the Islamic State and inciting terrorism on social media after posting a series of tweets encouraging others to “commit, prepare or instigate” terrorist attacks. Yesterday, Europol launched a new law enforcement body called the European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) tasked with combating ISIS presence and propaganda online.

July 1, 2015
Nigerian authorities announced last night that they had arrested a businessman accused of “participating actively” in Boko Haram’s abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls from Chibok last April as well as coordinating several deadly attacks since 2011.

June 30, 2015
ISIS militants beheaded 2 female civilians for the alleged crimes of “witchcraft and sorcery” in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province today, marking the first time the terrorist group has beheaded women.

June 29, 2015
ISIS released an audio clip recorded by the alleged suicide bomber, a Saudi national named Fahed Suleiman Abd al-Mohsen al-Gabaa, that attacked a Shiite mosque on Friday in Kuwait.