IT could well be an ominous harbinger of things to come, say some security experts. As Russia reels from the largest loss of life in a terrorist…
A law enforcement officer patrols the scene of the gun attack at the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow
Almost immediately, Russia’s national guard said a “search is ongoing for the attackers” who, according to the state newswire service RIA Novosti, left the venue in a white Renault. But late yesterday, Russia’s Federal Security Service said four people involved in the Moscow attack were among 11 detained.
The Russian leader’s stance came despite Russian authorities having reported several ISIS-related incidents within the past month. For its part, the FSB has said it had recently broken up an IS cell in Kaluga, a city south-west of Moscow and on March 7 said it had foiled an attack on a Moscow synagogue. On March 9 two Kazakh citizens were also reportedly killed in a shootout with anti-terrorism officers.
It said its fighters had attacked on the outskirts of Moscow, “killing and wounding hundreds and causing great destruction to the place before they withdrew to their bases safely” and then escaped. It gave no further detail. Western intelligence assessments appear to confirm that they believe ISIS-K carried out the assault on the Crocus City Hall.
He told Reuters that the group also counts as members of a number of Central Asian militants with their own grievances against Moscow. According to a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, ISIS-K maintains a core group of 1500 to 2200 fighters in the Nangarhar and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan, with smaller cells dispersed across the country.
Even though US-Iranian relations have been in a deep freeze, the Biden administration is said to have tried to give Iran a heads-up as it did with Russia this month, under what is known as the “duty-to-warn” information sharing on transnational terrorist threats. Speaking recently before a House committee, US General Michael E Kurilla, the head of the military’s Central Command, warned that ISIS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack US and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning”.But intelligence and security experts say it’s important also to look at ISIS-K within the context of the Islamic State group as a whole, not least given it represents only one affiliate.
Led today by the relatively little-known Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, IS continues to claim attacks regularly in places as far flung as Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Iraq, Mozambique and Syria. It concludes that “ISIS-K plots should be considered the organisation’s biggest global threat today”, with the Afghan affiliate in the past year having planned 21 external plots or attacks in nine countries, compared to eight plots or attacks in the previous year and just three between 2018 and March 2022.
Stoking the geopolitical fallout further, Russian Security Council deputy chair, Dmitry Medvedev, has also been quick to point the finger at Ukraine.
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