Europe's war 11/19/2015

The report is very abridged today. There are even bigger things on my mind than Europe's 9/11

RT News - November 19, 2015 (18:00 MSK)

Leader of Paris attacks killed in raid

Radio NZ,

20 November, 2015

The suspected Islamic State architect of the Paris attacks was among those killed in a police raid north of the capital, France has confirmed, bringing an end to the hunt for Europe's most wanted man.

Authorities said they had identified the corpse of Belgian national Abdelhamid Abaaoud from fingerprints in the aftermath of Wednesday's raid, in which at least two people died including a female suicide bomber after a gun battle with police.

"It was his body we discovered in the building, riddled with impacts," a statement from the Paris prosecutor said, a day after the pre-dawn raid. The prosecutor later added that it was unclear whether Abaaoud had detonated a suicide belt.

An undated picture purportedly showing 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud, taken from Islamic State (IS) online magazine Dabiq.   Photo: AFP / HO / DABIQ

Abaaoud was accused of orchestrating last Friday's coordinated bombings and shootings in the French capital, which killed 129 people. Seven assailants died in the attack and a suspected eighth is still on the run.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls broke the news of Abaaoud's death in parliament on Thursday local time to applause from MPs who were voting to extend a state of emergency for another three months.

"We know today ... that the mastermind of the attacks - or one of them, let's remain cautious - was among those dead," Valls told reporters.

Even before last week's attacks, Morroccan-born Abaaoud, 28, was one of Islamic State's highest-profile European recruits, prominently profiled in the group's slick online English-language magazine Dabiq, where he boasted of travelling across European borders staging attacks.

The group, which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria, has attracted thousands of young Europeans, and Abaaoud was seen as a leading figure in attracting others to the movement, particularly from his home country Belgium.

Police and forensics teams in Saint-Denis after the raid.    Photo: AFP

He claimed to have escaped a manhunt after a raid in Belgium in 2013 in which two other militants were killed. His own family has disowned him, accusing him of abducting his 13-year-old brother, who was later promoted on the Internet as Islamic State's youngest foreign fighter in Syria.

Before the attacks, European governments thought Abaaoud was still in Syria. "This is a major failing," said Roland Jaquard at the International Observatory for Terrorism.

While quickly tracking him down will be seen as a major success for French authorities, his presence in Paris will focus more attention on the difficulty European security services have in monitoring the continent's borders.

French officials have called for changes to the functioning of the EU's Schengen zone, which normally does not monitor the entry and exit of citizens of its 26 countries. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have arrived in Europe as refugees in recent months, including someone who used a passport found at the scene of one of Friday's attacks.

Firefight, explosions

Early on Wednesday, police swooped on the house where Abaaoud was holed up in the Paris suburb of St. Denis. Heavily armed officers stormed the building before dawn, triggering a firefight and multiple explosions.

Officials had said on Wednesday that two people were killed in the raid, including a female suicide bomber who blew herself up. Forensic scientists were trying to determine whether a third person had died. Eight people were arrested.

Police operation in Saint-Denis, near Paris on November 18, 2015, five days after Paris terror attacks.    Photo: AFP

Two police sources and a source close to the investigation told Reuters the St. Denis cell had been planning a new attack on Paris's La Defense business district. A source close to the investigation said the female bomber who was killed might have been Abaaoud's cousin.

The victims of the deadliest attacks in France since World War Two came from 17 different countries, many of them young people out on a Friday night at bars, restaurants, a concert hall and a football stadium.

Islamic State says it carried out the attacks in retaliation for French air raids against its positions over the past year.

‘ISIS branch’ seeking to produce chemical weapons - Iraq and US intel

Islamic State has a branch devoted to creating chemical weapons, AP reports, citing Iraqi and US officials. Earlier, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls also warned that Islamic State could potentially use chemical or biological weapons in its attacks.

A special branch has been set up by Islamic State to develop chemical weapon for the terrorist group using scientists from Iraq and Syria as well as other countries in the region, AP reported, citing Iraqi and US intelligence sources.

Although Islamic State has already used mustard gas on the battlefield, US intelligence agencies are skeptical about the terrorists’ capabilities to produce sophisticated chemical weapons suited for a potential terrorist attack

Suspected Paris attack mastermind killed in police raid – prosecutor

The alleged mastermind and sponsor of attacks in the French capital on Friday, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was killed during an anti-terrorist operation in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis on Wednesday, Paris prosecutor François Molins said.

His body was found under the wreckage of the building in Saint-Denis, which was stormed in Wednesday's raid.

"Abdel Hamid Abaaoud has just been formally identified and certified killed during the raid, after comparing fingerprints," the statement said. "It was the bullet-ridden body we discovered in the building," Paris persecutor François Molins said.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls praised the elimination of one of the masterminds behind the Paris attacks.

"We salute the work of the intelligence services and the police," said Valls.

EU Might End Friendship With US as 

Washington’s Policies Hurt Europe

Europe has suffered a great deal over the past couple of years due to US-fueled anti-Russian rhetoric that Washington forced on the EU, John Laughland, the director of Studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, told Radio Sputnik.

The EU is beginning to realize that they are the ones paying the price for Washington's anti-Russian rhetoric and poor US policies in the Middle East. The United States is destroying Europe by helping to cause the refugee crisis in the Middle East and terrorist attacks, Laughland said.

"If this realization starts to dawn, then there might be a risk for Washington," the political expert from the Paris-based thank-tank said.

The United States urged the EU to impose sanctions on Russia in 2014 over Moscow's alleged interference in the Ukrainian crisis — a claim repeatedly denied by the Kremlin. Russia then imposed an embargo on food imports from the EU as a retaliatory measure to counter Western anti-Russian sanctions. As a result, the economies of both Russia and the EU are hurting, while the United States gets to sit on the side.

However things might change in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13. French President Francois Hollande called for a broad coalition, including Russia and the United States, to tackle ISIL which had claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.

Now if Western countries are prepared to cooperate with Russia on the immediate priority, which is to defeat ISIL, then overall relations between Russia and the West will have to be sorted out, Laughland said.

The EU might consider ending anti-Russian sanctions to seek closer cooperation with Moscow. Now this might lead to a quarrel between Germany and France, which might want to end the sanctions, on the one side and the countries of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, which have a strong anti-Russian stance and would want anti-Russian sanctions continued, on the other side, the political expert explained.

"That is the battle that would take place within the European Union," Laughland told Radio Sputnik.

Furthermore, with the intensifying refugee crisis in Europe, which is close to getting out of control, Europeans are starting to realize that Washington's unwise policies in Syria are destroying the continent.

France urges US to join anti-ISIS coallition with Russia

RT reports:

French President François Hollande is to call for the US to review its strategy in fighting terrorist group Islamic State, arguing that Europe cannot wait for America’s long war of attrition with the jihadists to work, the Guardian reports.

Hollande is to meet US President Barack Obama on Tuesday next week before going to Russia for a visit. The French leader intends to make Obama aware of the extent of damage done to Europe by the developing refugee crisis and the rising threat of terrorist attacks, a European diplomat told the British newspaper.“The message that we want to send to the Americans is simply that the crisis is destabilizing Europe,”said the diplomat, who did not wish to be named. “The problem is that the attacks in Paris and the refugee crisis show that we don’t have time. There is an emergency.”

The source said that’s the reason why the French president will visit Washington on Tuesday before flying to Moscow.

According to the diplomat, Paris’ position is that the Europeans cannot afford to wait for years for the war of attrition that the US-led coalition is waging on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria, to take effect. There is an impression in Europe that the US doesn’t fully comprehend the urgency of the issue because it doesn’t have to take the bulk of the refugees fleeting Middle East and pouring into Europe in the biggest movement of people since World War II.

Hollande earlier called on the US and Russia, both of which lead a separate effort to eradicate IS, to join forces. Moscow said a broad coalition was needed to defeat the terrorists, but Washington said it would only agree if Russia shared its goals in Syria.

The White House insists that the Syrian conflict can only be resolved if President Bashar Assad steps down.

“Bottom line is, I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power,” Barack Obama told reporters in Manila on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The Kremlin sees the Syrian government as the most viable force in the country that can provide ground troops to battle terrorist groups. Russia says Assad’s political future should be decided by the Syrian people, but the US insists he should not be part of a political settlement. […]

Russian warplanes disrupt ISIS oil sales 

 

channels; destroy 500 terrorist oil trucks 

 

in Syria

Around 500 fuel tanker vehicles transporting illegal oil from Syria to Iraq for processing have been destroyed by Russia’s Air Forces, the General Staff said.

“In recent years, Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and other extremist groups have organized the operations of the so-called ‘pipeline on wheels’ on the territories they control,” Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov said.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel have been delivered to Iraq for processing by trucks and the revenue generated from these illegal exports is the one of the terrorists’ main sources of funding, he said

Russian strategic bombers hit ISIS positions with cruise missiles, smart bombs (VIDEO)

Russia’s Defense Ministry has released new videos of retribution attacks on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) with strategic bombers launching smart bombs and cruise missiles.

Strategic aviation was scrambled shortly after confirmation that the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt's Sinai Desert on October 31 was downed by a terrorist bomb.

The footage was apparently recorded on the morning of November 19 and collected as technicians prepare the Russian long-range bombers to fulfill their missions.