- Stabbing suspect swore allegiance to ISIS before killing teacher in France on ‘day of jihad’: prosecutor New York Post
- French school attacker declared allegiance to Islamic State, prosecutor says • FRANCE 24 English FRANCE 24 English
- Killing of Teacher and Hamas Assault Set a Jittery France on Edge The New York Times
- French school stabbing linked to Brussels shooting by suspects’ allegiance to Islamic State group FRANCE 24 English
- Terror suspect accused in teacher stabbing swore allegiance to ISIS before knifing, prosecutor says Fox News
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Tag Archives: ISIS
U.S. Army Soldier Pleads Guilty To Terrorism Charges For Attempting To Assist ISIS To Conduct Deadly Ambush On U.S. Troops – Department of Justice
- U.S. Army Soldier Pleads Guilty To Terrorism Charges For Attempting To Assist ISIS To Conduct Deadly Ambush On U.S. Troops Department of Justice
- U.S. Army soldier Cole Bridges pleads guilty to attempting to help ISIS murder U.S. troops CBS News
- Iraqi national living in Oregon pleads guilty to making ISIS propaganda online, US District Atty. says KATU
- US soldier pleads guilty in botched plot to help ISIS launch attack on 9/11 memorial New York Post
- Army soldier pleads guilty to attempting to help ISIS murder US troops The Hill
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NYC bike path terror suspect found guilty on all counts
CNN
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Sayfullo Saipov was found guilty of murder by a federal jury for using a rented truck to fatally strike eight people on a New York City bike path on Halloween Day in 2017.
Jurors deliberated about six hours over two days in the case involving the deadliest terrorist attack New York had seen since 9/11 – which left six foreign tourists and two Americans dead.
The same jury will determine whether Saipov is sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty. The vote must be unanimous for the death penalty to be imposed. The penalty phase of the trial is scheduled to begin on February 6.
The trial was the first federal death penalty case heard during the administration of President Joe Biden, who had campaigned against capital punishment at the federal level.
Jury deliberations began Wednesday afternoon after Judge Vernon Broderick read them instructions.
Saipov had pleaded not guilty.
He was convicted Thursday in the Southern District of New York of counts of murder in aid of racketeering activity, assault with a dangerous weapon and attempted murder in aid of racketeering activity, attempted murder in aid of racketeering activity, provision of material support to ISIS, and violence and destruction of a motor vehicle.
In closing arguments, defense attorney David Patton did not dispute the facts of the attack Saipov is accused of committing. But the defense disputed the prosecution’s claim that Saipov was motivated to commit the attack to gain entry to ISIS. Patton argued that the attack was spurred by religious fervor to please his God and “ascend to paradise” in his religion.
Prosecutors told jurors that Saipov carried out the attack to become a member of the terrorist group.
“People who ISIS relies upon to conquer territory and kill non-believers, those are its soldiers. Of course they are part of ISIS. That is common sense,” prosecutor Amanda Leigh Houle said. “An organization engaged in a worldwide war needs its soldiers and its soldiers are part of the group.”
The charges stemmed from the 2017 attack in which Saipov drove a U-Haul truck into cyclists and pedestrians on Manhattan’s West Side bike path. He then crashed the vehicle into a school bus and left the truck while brandishing a pellet gun and paintball gun, authorities said at the time. He was shot by an NYPD officer and taken into custody, officials said.
Investigators said Saipov told them he planned the attack for about a year and was inspired by ISIS videos, according to a criminal complaint.
Saipov became radicalized by consuming extremist content during lengthy solo stints as a long-haul truck driver, his attorney said.
He grew up culturally Muslim in Uzbekistan but was not exposed to any significant amount of religious study, and his family members are not ISIS supporters, Patton said.
Saipov came to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010 and was living in New Jersey before the attack. He lived with his wife and three children and drove for Uber, according to officials.
Saipov came to the US on a diversity immigrant visa, which allows people from countries with low recent immigration to apply for a visa and green card, according to the Department of Homeland Security. He later became a legal permanent resident, officials said.
Of the eight people killed in the attack, five were from Argentina, two were Americans, and one was from Belgium, police said.
The Argentinians were part of a group celebrating the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation in New York City.
Argentina’s Foreign Affairs Ministry identified them as Hernán Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damián Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferruchi.
Nicholas Cleves, 23, from New York, and Darren Drake, 32, from New Milford, New Jersey, were the two Americans killed.
Ann-Laure Decadt, a 31-year-old Belgian woman, was also among those killed, according to a statement from her husband, Alexander Naessens. Decadt, a mother of two young sons, was on a trip to New York with her two sisters and her mother, Naessens said after the attack.
ISIS acknowledges the death of its leader, announces his successor
CNN
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ISIS acknowledged the death of its leader on Wednesday and confirmed his successor.
The group’s media affiliate al-Furqan published an audio message by an ISIS spokesman announcing the death of its leader who was appointed in March.
“I announce and mourn for the Islamic state and the fighters of almighty Islamic state, (the absence) of the Amir of believers and the Calipha of the Muslims Abu al-Hasan al-Hashmi al- Qurayshi … he was killed while struggling against the enemies’ of God,” spokesman Abu Omar al-Muhajer said in the message released Wednesday.
ISIS didn’t make it clear who killed the group commander or where.
The group announced his successor, who goes by Abu al-Husain al-Husaini al-Quraishi. Little is known about him, but the group described him as an “old fighter” without mentioning any further details.
The deceased leader was appointed by ISIS in March 2022 after US President Joe Biden announced the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in a military operation in the northwest of Syria.
This is a breaking story, more to follow.
Kansas woman who led ISIS battalion gets 20 years in prison
Researchers of extremist movements say Fluke-Ekren, 42, is the first and so far only U.S. woman to be prosecuted for an Islamic State leadership role. Two of Fluke-Ekren’s children described her as an abuser who fantasized about carrying out terrorist strikes and who sought to indoctrinate those around her to kill “disbelievers.” Federal prosecutor Raj Parekh described Fluke-Ekren as the “empress of ISIS.”
“Let there be no doubt about what the purpose of this battalion was,” said Parekh, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He said that “it wasn’t for self-defense” and that a document from the Islamic State showed that a member of Fluke-Ekren’s brigade “wanted to be the first to carry out a suicide operation.”
Defense attorneys disputed the child-abuse allegations and characterized Fluke-Ekren as the leader of a battalion that never actually engaged in fighting.
“We didn’t even shoot a gun,” Fluke-Ekren said. “I’ve never seen a suicide bomb explode, or exploded one.”
Former friends have said Fluke-Ekren was a studious young mother who earned a biology degree at the University of Kansas, went to graduate school in Indiana and worked as a teacher in Kansas City, Mo., before moving with her children and second husband to Egypt in 2008. She then took a sharp turn toward extremism, estranged family members told U.S. investigators.
Fluke-Ekren grew up as Allison Elizabeth Brooks on an 81-acre farm in Overbrook, Kan., the daughter of a teacher and an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, prosecutors said.
“There is nothing in Fluke-Ekren’s background that can explain her conduct,” Parekh said at the sentencing. Fluke-Ekren’s father told U.S. authorities that she was “predisposed to zealotry” and “often looking for people to give her a difficult time for being Muslim.”
“Was she religious? Yes. She was from Middle America. Before she was Muslim, she was like a Bible-beating Christian,” Amy Amer, a former friend of Fluke-Ekren, told The Washington Post in June. Amer said she was taken aback when Fluke-Ekren started espousing extremist ideas.
Fluke-Ekren pleaded guilty this year to a conspiracy charge of providing material support to a terrorist organization, admitting that she aided terrorist groups while in Iraq, Libya and Syria from 2011 to 2019. Fluent in both English and Arabic, Fluke-Ekren’s assistance included analyzing documents for Ansar al-Sharia, the group behind the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans in 2012, according to her guilty plea. She also gave assistance to the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, prosecutors said.
But it was in the Islamic State that Fluke-Ekren would attain prominent roles.
In 2016, Fluke-Ekren’s second husband oversaw Islamic State snipers in Syria, and she organized child care, medical services and education in the city of Raqqa, according to court documents. Fluke-Ekren trained women and young girls to use AK-47 rifles, grenades and explosive suicide belts in case male fighters needed help defending against enemy attacks, her plea documents say. One witness who received military training as a girl said Fluke-Ekren later told her that “it was important to kill the kuffar,” an Arabic word for disbelievers, the documents say.
As male fighters were losing ground in 2017 to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the Islamic State mayor of Raqqa named Fluke-Ekren the leader of the Khatiba Nusaybah, an all-female battalion. Fluke-Ekren’s group gave medical training and religious classes, as well as martial arts instruction. It also provided courses on vehicle bombings and how to pack a “go bag” with rifles and military supplies, according to court documents filed in June.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema imposed the maximum sentence allowed under Fluke-Ekren’s plea agreement. The judge said she did not find Fluke-Ekren’s statements during Tuesday’s hearing “wholly credible.” Fluke-Ekren said she had provided only “unwitting” support to Ansar al-Sharia in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks and told the judge she was training women to handle weapons in Syria not for terrorist purposes, but to help prevent fatal accidents inside Syrian homes and to teach women self-defense in case enemy combatants attempted to sexually abuse them.
“The vast majority of my time was spent cooking, cleaning, taking children to doctors, putting antiseptic on scraped knees and mediating sibling disputes,” Fluke-Ekren said, often breaking into tears during her remarks to the judge.
Brinkema said that teaching women and girls to use “suicide vests cannot possibly be considered self-defense” and that she disagreed with Fluke-Ekren characterizing herself as a “passive dupe” who was led into terrorist activities by her second husband.
Witnesses said Fluke-Ekren planned different mass-casualty strikes, though she never carried out the attacks. A woman with Islamic State ties told investigators that Fluke-Ekren had the idea in 2014 to bomb a U.S. college in the Midwest. One of Fluke-Ekren’s daughters told U.S. investigators how the former Kansas mom “explained that she could go to a shopping mall in the United States, park a vehicle full of explosives in the basement or parking garage level of the structure, and detonate the explosives in the vehicle with a cell phone triggering device.” The daughter said Fluke-Ekren deemed any attack that did not kill a large number of people a “waste of resources,” according to court documents.
“In reality, the Khatiba Nussayeb had barely one hundred women, including members designated as babysitters, nurses, and cooks,” defense attorneys Joseph King and Sean Sherlock wrote in a sentencing brief. “The loosely organized group had no formal ranks, were not issued uniforms or weapons, never engaged in fighting, nor fired a shot against an enemy.”
In a court filing in August, Fluke-Ekren’s attorneys said her statements about carrying out terrorist attacks in the United States were responses to “the shock and horrors of war” she experienced after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, or “U.S. or U.S.-led coalition forces,” killed Syrian civilians in bombings and airstrikes.
“In 2015 one of her children was killed, and another severely injured, from such an attack on a residential neighborhood,” King and Sherlock wrote. “She saw numerous friends, neighbors, and children killed in similar incidents during the war.”
The attorneys denied the abuse allegations from Fluke-Ekren’s children, calling them “inaccurate, exaggerated, hyperbolic, and in many cases completely false.” They said the allegations were disclosed to Fluke-Ekren for the first time in September.
Parekh said Fluke-Ekren unsuccessfully tried to form a female battalion for years, before Islamic State leaders authorized her plans in Raqqa. Fluke-Ekren was not charged with violent conduct, but the prosecutor argued in a sentencing brief that she encouraged another woman to carry out her own suicide attack and arranged to adopt her child.
Fluke-Ekren chose not to cooperate with U.S. investigators after her arrest, Parekh added.
“This defendant is probably a gold mine of intelligence,” Parekh said. “All the people that she’s met, all the co-conspirators that she’s trained — but she didn’t cooperate.”
After her second husband was killed in an airstrike, Fluke-Ekren married a specialist in unmanned aerial vehicles for the Islamic State who was working on “attaching chemical weapons onto drones to drop chemical bombs from the air,” according to court records. He was also killed in an airstrike. Fluke-Ekren’s fourth husband was the Islamic State official in charge of Raqqa’s defense during a siege by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces at the time he was killed.
Fluke-Ekren said she abandoned the Islamic State in 2019 and surrendered to Syrian authorities in the summer of 2021 “to protect her children from the difficulties of living in war-torn Syria,” her attorneys wrote in a filing. She was turned over to U.S. custody in January, after 11 years outside the United States.
One daughter who spoke at Tuesday’s hearing claimed that Fluke-Ekren forced her to marry an Islamic State fighter when she was 13 years old and he was 17 years old. The daughter claimed that the Islamic State fighter raped her. Fluke-Ekren claimed that it was her daughter’s choice to marry the man.
In a recorded call with the daughter in January 2021 that Parekh played in court, Fluke-Ekren said, “You can’t give up, because that’s the only time that you lose.”
Referring to the deaths of her second husband and 5-year-old son, Fluke-Ekren said on the call: “You don’t feel regret. You feel sad but you don’t — regret is like, you hate what you did or decisions that you made, but when you have your goal and you know what you’re doing, and you keep moving towards that, you don’t have regret.”
15 killed, 40 injured in terrorist attack claimed by ISIS in Iran
CNN
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At least 15 people were killed and 40 others were injured Wednesday in a “terrorist attack” at the Shahcheragh Shrine in the city of Shiraz, southern Iran, according to state-run media and Iranian officials.
Two children were among the victims, according to state-run Press TV.
Iranian security forces have arrested two of the suspected attackers, and a manhunt is underway to capture a third, state news said.
The terror group ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, releasing a statement through its affiliated Amaq news agency that said one of its members had “targeted groups of Sunni refusal infidels inside the shrine with his machine gun, causing the death of tens of them.”
Nour News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s top security body, said the suspects were foreign nationals.
Wednesday evening is one of the busiest times for the shrine, reported the state-run IRNA, and eyewitnesses said an attacker was in a car before targeting worshippers at its entrance.
The governor of Fars province said that “the terrorist first targeted the servant and guard of the shrine, and intended to attack the congregational evening prayers, but one of the servants shut the door on him,” state news said quoting the governor.
“Loud screams were heard in the women’s section of the shrine at the time of adhan [the call for prayer] and suddenly an armed man was spotted with a Kalashnikov firing indiscriminately in the compound of the shrine,” an eyewitness told state media.
“After the initial burst of fire, the attacker went near the shrine and fired many rounds at those present at the scene,” the eyewitness added.
The attack took place on the same day that clashes broke out throughout Iran as thousands of people came to the burial site of Mahsa Amini in Saqqez, a city in the Kurdistan province, to mark 40 days since her death, semi-official Iranian state news agency ISNA said. It’s unclear if the attack was related to the protests.
Protests have swept through the Islamic Republic following the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, who died on September 16 after being detained by “morality police” and taken to a “re-education center,” allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.
Syria: US kills two top ISIS leaders in airstrike
CNN
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US forces killed two top ISIS leaders in an airstrike in northern Syria on Thursday, according to two defense officials, one day after a US raid killed an ISIS smuggler.
The strike killed Abu ‘Ala, one of the top five ISIS leaders and the deputy leader of ISIS in Syria, as well as Abu Mu’Ad al-Qahtani, an ISIS official responsible for prisoner affairs, the officials said. The strike was conducted at 6:23pm local time in Syria.
No US forces were injured or killed during the operation, and there was no damage or loss to US equipment because of the strike.
US Central Command forces in the region spent more than 1,000 hours collecting intelligence on the targets to limit the risk of collateral damage, the officials said, and according to an initial assessment, no civilians were killed or wounded, the officials said.
The airstrike comes after the US military conducted a separate raid in northeast Syria that killed an ISIS weapons smuggler on Wednesday night local time, the Pentagon announced in a statement Thursday.
The US has continued to go after ISIS leadership in Syria, even as the terror group has been reduced to a fraction of its former self. The back-to-back raid and airstrike within such a short period of time represent an increase in the intensity of operations against the terror group and underscores the US focus on ensuring ISIS doesn’t increase in strength.
“Last night, U.S. Central Command forces conducted a helicopter raid in northeast Syria, near the village of Qamishli, targeting Rakkan Wahid al-Shammri, an ISIS official known to facilitate the smuggling of weapons and fighters to support ISIS operations. During the operation, the targeted individual was killed and one of his associates was wounded,” the statement on the raid from US Central Command said.
CENTCOM added that no US forces or civilians were killed or injured in that operation.
Three defense officials told CNN the weapons the target smuggled were used to support ISIS operations.
One of the defense officials said the raid was a unilateral US operation and didn’t involve the coalition to defeat ISIS. The operation involved US special operations forces using helicopters.
The deconfliction line was not used to notify Russia in advance of the operation, one official said, both because of the location of the raid and because of its sensitivity.
“USCENTCOM is committed to our allies and partners in the enduring defeat of ISIS,” CENTCOM spokesman Col. Joe Buccino said in a statement.
Earlier on Thursday the Pentagon said a senior ISIS official had been targeted but declined to give any more details.
Syrian state TV said on Telegram that a US operation in northeast Syria killed one person and accused the US of having “kidnapped” several people.
The US has gone after several senior ISIS officials this year in Syria. In February, the US conducted a raid in northwest Syria in which ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed after he blew himself up. It was the largest US raid in Syria since the 2019 operation that killed the previous ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Qurayshi was named the terrorist group’s leader in November 2019 at the same time ISIS confirmed that Baghdadi had been killed.
The US knew his location for several months before the raid, officials said. He was holed up in the third floor of a building with his family, running the terror group’s operations through a network of couriers. His deputy, who lived on the second floor, was also killed in the raid.
Since March, the leader of ISIS has been Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the group announced, but it is thought to be an assumed name.
Several months after the Qurayshi raid, the US-led combined joint task force fighting ISIS detained another senior ISIS leader in Syria, Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, known as Salim. And in July, the US carried out a drone strike in northwest Syria that killed Maher al-Agal, the leader of ISIS in Syria.
The operations in Syria come even as the Biden administration has tried to shift the military away from the Middle East – and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and to what the US considers the challenges of the future in an increasingly assertive China and a Russia willing to use force against its neighbors.
After the defeat of the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate in 2019, the group has continually sought to regroup, trying to challenge the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS. Those efforts have included multiple attempts to attack the al-Hol camp in Syria which holds around 60,000 people. ISIS views the displaced persons camp as a recruiting ground.
Last month, ISIS attempted to carry out a suicide attack against the camp, rigging two vehicles with explosives, according to US Central Command. One vehicle exploded prematurely, while the other was intercepted by the US-partnered Syrian Democratic Forces.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
US drone strike kills top Syrian ISIS leader Maher al-Agal
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The leader of the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria has been killed Tuesday by a U.S. drone strike.
Maher al-Agal, whom military officials describe as “one of the top five ISIS leaders and the leader of ISIS in Syria,” was taken out after being targeted near Jindayris in the country’s northwest.
“This strike reaffirms CENTCOM’s steadfast commitment to the region and the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Col. Joe Buccino, a Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement. “The removal of these ISIS leaders will disrupt the terrorist organization’s ability to further plot and carry out global attacks.”
Maher, according to the defense officials, was “responsible for aggressively pursuing the development of ISIS networks outside of Iraq and Syria.”
FLORIDA MAN WHO SPREAD BOMB-MAKING VIDEO, PLEDGED HIS ALLEGIANCE TO ISIS GETS 20 YEARS IN PRISON
A masked Islamic State soldier poses holding the ISIS flag in 2015.
(Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
CENTCOM also says a “senior ISIS official closely associated with Maher was seriously injured during the strike.”
“Extensive planning went into this operation to ensure its successful execution,” it added. “An initial review indicates there were no civilian casualties.”
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Despite eliminating Maher, Buccino said “ISIS continues to represent a threat to the U.S. and partners in the region.
“CENTCOM maintains a sufficient and sustainable presence in the region and will continue to counter threats against regional security,” he added.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
US military ground raid in Syria captures top ISIS leader
A rare U.S. military ground raid in northwestern Syria has captured a top ISIS leader, according to the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.
A U.S. defense official said there were no injuries to U.S. military personnel and no damage to aircraft involved in the raid.
“Coalition forces detained a senior Daesh leader during an operation in Syria June 16,” Operation Inherent Resolve said in a statement. “The detained individual was assessed to be an experienced bomb maker and facilitator who became one of the group’s top leaders in Syria.”
A U.S. official told ABC News the name of the ISIS leader captured in the raid is Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi and described him as actively planning ISIS operations.
“Though degraded, ISIS remains a threat. We remain dedicated to its defeat. Last night’s operation, which took a senior ISIS operator off the battlefield, demonstrates our commitment to the security of the Middle East and to the enduring defeat of ISIS,” said Gen. Erik Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, in a statement provided to ABC News.
U.S. military ground raids into northwestern Syria are risky because they are carried out far west from U.S. bases in eastern Syria in areas that are controlled either by extremists or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
“The mission was meticulously planned to minimize the risk of collateral damage, particularly any potential harm to civilians,” OIR said. “There were no civilians harmed during the operation nor any damage to Coalition aircraft or assets.”
U.S. military ground operations in northwestern Syria have targeted top ISIS leaders, most notably Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who killed himself during an October 2019 raid near the border with Turkey that was carried out by the elite Delta Force.
His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, detonated himself with an explosion during a similar raid in February this year.
“Coalition forces will continue to work with our partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Iraqi Security Forces, including the Peshmerga, to hunt the remnants of Daesh wherever they hide to ensure Daesh’s enduring defeat.,” Operation Inherent Resolve added. Daesh is another name used to describe ISIS.
The terror group was militarily defeated in Syria in 2019 and since then, its leaders have gone into hiding to prevent being targeted by U.S. forces.
However, ISIS fighters maintain a low-level insurgency in Iraq and Syria, and the group continues to inspire followers in the West to commit violent attacks.
In January, ISIS mounted its largest operation since its military defeat, as hundreds of ISIS fighters attempted to free thousands of terrorist fighters detained at a prison in Hasakah in northeast Syria.
After 10 days of heavy fighting, U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, helped by U.S. airstrikes, were able to retake the prison, though it is believed that several hundred ISIS prisoners were able to flee.
Kurdish forces claimed that 374 ISIS fighters had been killed during the attempted prison break.
ISIS attack kills two and injures six in Israel as Arab and Israeli officials hold historic summit
The attack — the second of its kind in a week — coincided with a landmark regional summit in Israel’s Negev desert, where top diplomats from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Israel and the United States are meeting to discuss security issues.
“We condemn today’s terrorist attack in Hadera, Israel,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted on Sunday from Israel. “Such senseless acts of violence and murder have no place in society. We stand with our Israeli partners and send our condolences to the families of the victims.”
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which quoted a post from the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency. Amaq posted a screengrab from a video that circulated on social media showing two masked men pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIS prior to the attack.
Amaq called the attack a “twin immersive commando attack by Islamic State Fighters,” according to SITE. The last time ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack in Israel was in June 2017.
The two assailants, who were shot and killed by Israeli police, were from the Arab-majority Israeli city of Umm al-Fahm in the northern district of Haifa. An Israeli police spokesperson said the operatives fired at local police in Hadera, killing two passers-by. Police said the victims were members of the border police force.
“A short while ago, two terrorists arrived on Herbert Samuel Street in Hadera and began firing at a local police force. As a result of the shooting, the deaths of 2 passers-by were determined,” the spokesperson said.
“An undercover force that was at the scene sought contact and after a brief gun battle neutralized the terrorists,” the spokesperson added.
The Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera said six people were injured in the attack, two of whom are in serious condition.
On Tuesday, an Arab-Israeli assailant killed four people in a stabbing attack in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba before he was fatally shot by a passer-by, according to Israeli police. The assailant had previously been arrested for supporting ISIS, according to the Israeli judiciary.
Separately, tensions have been rising between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem and the West Bank, especially as the coinciding holidays of Ramadan, Passover and Easter approach. Last year, clashes and tensions in Jerusalem during this time period helped trigger the latest conflict with Hamas-led militants in Gaza.
In Jerusalem, there have been at least three stabbing attacks since the start of the month against Israelis, while in the West Bank, at least nine Palestinians, including several teenagers, have been shot and killed in clashes with Israeli forces in recent weeks.
A new Arab-Israeli ‘architecture’
At the conclusion of the two-day summit in the Negev desert Monday, the foreign ministers of the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt issued a rare condemnation of the attack. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco normalized ties with Israel less than two years ago under the US-brokered Abraham Accords. Egypt was the first Arab state to make peace with the Jewish state in 1979.
During the joint presser of the six top diplomats, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid touted a “new architecture” formed by Iran’s regional foes.
“This new architecture — the shared capabilities we are building — intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies,” said Lapid.
Israel and some Arab countries are concerned about a potential nuclear deal with Iran bolstering its ability to build a nuclear weapon, and empowering Tehran-backed militants around the region. The US and its western allies defend the restoration of the 2015 deal — which would aim to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief — as the best way to boost regional and global security.
However Blinken offered Washington’s regional allies at the Negev summit reassurances. “As neighbors and, in the case of the United States, as friends, we will also work together to confront common security challenges and threats, including those from Iran and its proxies,” he said.
The new diplomatic relations have been met by protests from Palestinians. The Abraham Accords marked a departure from the long-held notion that Arab states would not normalize relations with Israel until a Palestinian state is established.
The United States, along with the Arab officials at the summit, say they want a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Negotiations on the issue stalled in 2014. The Palestinian Authority, which controls most of the West Bank, is unpopular, according to public opinion polls, while Israeli settlements — seen by most of the international community as illegal — have expanded. Meanwhile Gaza, another Palestinian territory, is ruled by hardline Islamists who have no formal relations with Israel or most of the Western world.
Leading a fragile cross-partisan coalition government, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said current conditions are not right for resuming diplomacy with the Palestinians. Bennett, himself from a nationalist right-wing party, has said publicly he opposes a two-state solution.
“Unless the occupation ends, Arab normalization meetings are nothing but an illusion and free reward for Israel,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh told his cabinet on Monday.
Jordan’s King Abdullah arrived in Ramallah on Monday for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, aimed at reducing regional tensions ahead of Ramadan.
“The region will never be graced with security and stability without a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause on the basis of a two-state solution which includes the establishment of a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967, borders with east Jerusalem as its capital,” said Abdullah in the Ramallah meeting, referring to territory annexed by Israel during the 1967 war with Arab countries.