Islamic State in Khorasan, an Afghanistan entity, is also active in Pakistan and Iran and has set sights on Europe and beyond
People bring flowers to the Crocus city hall in memory of victims of the Moscow terrorist attack. Photograph: Nanna Heitmann/New York TimesFive years ago this month, a US-backed Kurdish and Arab militia ousted Islamic State group fighters from a village in eastern Syria, the group’s last sliver of territory.
The assault was the third concert venue in the northern hemisphere that the Islamic State group has struck in the past decade, Hoffman said, after an attack on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in November 2015, as part of a broader operation that struck other targets in the city, and a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena, England, in May 2017.
But the upward arc and scope of Isis-K’s attacks have increased in recent years, with cross-border strikes into Pakistan and a growing number of plots in Europe. Most of those European plots were thwarted, prompting western intelligence assessments that the group might have reached the lethal limits of its capabilities.
“Thus far, Isis-Khorasan has relied primarily on inexperienced operatives in Europe to try to advance attacks in its name,” Christine Abizaid, head of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told a House committee in November. “Isis-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years,” frequently criticising President Vladimir Putin in its propaganda, said Colin Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm based in New York. “Isis-K accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood in its hands, referencing Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Syria.”
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