Somalilandsun – Jihadist attacks in France, Tunisia, Kuwait and Somalia have left over 140 people killed, causing worldwide panic in just a few hours. Western authorities severely condemned the aggressions.
In France, a delivery man with known Islamist connections beheaded his boss and left the body, daubed with Arabic writing, at the site of a US-owned gas factory in southeast France before trying to blow up the complex.
The assailant rammed his delivery van into a warehouse containing gas canisters, triggering an initial explosion, and was arrested minutes later as he tried to open canisters containing flammable chemicals, prosecutors said today.
Police found the head of the victim, the 54-year-old manager of the transport firm which employed the suspect, dangling from a fence.
“There is no other link other than to say that terrorism is our common enemy,” said President Francois Hollande, returning to Paris from an EU summit in Brussels.
“There should be no doubt as to our country’s ability to protect itself and remain vigilant,” he said, announcing a tightening of national security to levels he said were unprecedented in recent decades.
Hollande said there were inscriptions on the headless body, and police sources said they were in Arabic, but officials did not reveal their content.
In Kuwait, a suicide bomber killed 27 people when he blew himself up inside a packed Shi’ite Muslim mosque in Kuwait city during Friday prayers, the health ministry and witnesses said, the first attack of its kind in the major oil-exporting state.
The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded 227 people according to the interior ministry, in the district of Sawaber in the eastern part of the Kuwaiti capital.
Parliament member Khalil al-Salih, who was at the mosque when the attack occurred, said worshippers were kneeling in prayer when the bomber walked into the Imam al-Sadeq Mosque and detonated his explosives, destroying walls and the ceiling.
The mosque preacher was quoted by state news agency KUNA as saying that the attack targeted worshippers at the back of the mosque, towards the end of the Friday prayers.
It was the first suicide bombing at a Shi’ite mosque in Kuwait and worst militant attack in the country for many years.
Islamic State named the bomber as Abu Suleiman al-Muwahed and said in a statement posted on social media that he had targeted a “temple of the rejectionists” — a term it generally uses to refer to Shi’ites, whom it regards as heretics.
Islamic State had urged its followers on Tuesday to step up attacks during the Ramadan fasting month against Christians, Shi’ites and Sunni Muslims fighting with a U.S.-led coalition against the ultra-hardline jihadist group.
In Tunisia, a gunman disguised as a tourist opened fire at a hotel with a weapon he had hidden in an umbrella, killing 37 people, including British, German and Belgian tourists, as they lounged at the beach and pool in a popular resort town.
Terrified tourists ran for cover after the gunfire and an explosion erupted at the Imperial Marhaba in Sousse resort town, 140 km (90 miles) south of the capital Tunis, before police shot the gunman dead, witnesses and security officials said.
In Somalia, Al Shabaab militants detonated a car bomb and battled African Union troops at a peacekeepers’ base south of Mogadishu, the latest in a series of attacks in Somalia, military officials and a rebel spokesman said.
In another attack, al Shabaab killed a senior military commander in the port city of Kismayu, a Somali official said.
The attack on the camp in Leego came as residents gathered for morning prayers, the latest in a series of assaults since the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began a week ago.
Such attacks during Ramadan are a hallmark of the Islamist militants fighting to overthrow the Western-backed Mogadishu government
The Leego attack started with a car bomb ramming into the base, going past soldiers who tried to stop it by firing at it, Somali Major Nur Olow said.
Also in Syria, Islamic State fighters killed at least 145 civilians in an attack on the town of Kobani and a nearby village, in what a monitoring group described as one of the worst massacres carried out by the hardline group in Syria.
Islamic State pressed a separate assault to capture government-held parts of the northeastern city of Hasaka, blowing up a security building and triggering a government appeal for all residents to take up arms. The United Nations said 60,000 people were reported to have fled the attack.
Islamic State’s twin attacks which began on Thursday showed the group returning to the offensive in Syria after two weeks of defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led forces, supported by US-led air strikes. Earlier this week the Kurds advanced to within 50 km (30 miles) of Raqqa city, the group’s de facto capital.
Source : http://www.buenosairesherald.com
