Pan-Islamism

The so-called Islamic State has suffered a series of setbacks in recent months, with key cities being retaken and the territory they are active in reducing in size greatly. Although scores of foreign fighters have been returning to their home countries, there remains a significant number of supporters still residing in the shrinking “caliphate”.

On Aug. 29, the Treasury Department announced that a senior Islamic State official, Salim Mustafa Muhammad al-Mansur, had been added to the US government’s list of specially designated global terrorists.

Two Muslim individuals with Swedish passports who were sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Greek Court in Thrace for ties with ISIS about 10 ten ago, were planning to blow up the White House, according to the trial documents “Thema” has brought yo light.

The Pentagon has reportedly acknowledged that a US airstrike destroyed a mosque in Syria's Aleppo province in March, a CNN report says. The US had insisted that it targeted a terrorist meeting and claimed the mosque was intact, despite video evidence.

Photo: AP

The U.S. State Department issued a new alert for U.S. citizens planning to travel to Europe.

They should be aware of a continued threat of terrorist attacks throughout the continent, the alert, that expires on September 1, said.

A convicted al-Qaeda suspect who was detained by gendarmerie on April 19 while working as a village imam in the Central Anatolian province of Çankırı has admitted to involvement in the 2003 HSBC bombing.

My heart sank when I read these two stories: Some of our citizens who went to Turkish diplomatic missions in France to cast their votes were bedecked in Ottoman attire. What kind of nostalgia is this? What kind of a perception of history and time is this? Those French people who saw them, were they afraid or amused? 

The United States has said it conducted an air strike in Syria against an al-Qaeda meeting but denied deliberately targeting a mosque where a monitor said 46 people were killed on March 17.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead in the raid on al-Jineh, in Aleppo province, were civilians.

US special operations command launched a raid in Yemen recently targeting the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula. It was the first high profile special forces attack under the Presidency of Donald Trump, which led to the death of 14 terrorists, 20 civilians and a navy seal soldier.

The Islamic State (IS) group says it carried out an attack that killed 39 and left dozens wounded during New Year celebrations in Istanbul.

In a statement quoted by international media, it says the raid was part of "the blessed operations that Islamic State is conducting against the protector of the cross, Turkey".