President Hollande vows to strike back on Islamic State's 'act of war'

French President Francois Hollande said the near-simultaneous attacks that left at least 127 dead an "act of war" organized abroad by the Islamic State and vowed to wage a "merciless" fight against the militant organization.

Hollande put France's security at its highest level Saturday morning with the military continuing to patrol France's streets to give residents a sense of security. Parisians were encouraged to stay home. Hollande declared a three-day period of national mourning.

Islamic State photos 'show Palmyra temple destruction'

By BBC News

Islamic State (IS) has published images of what appears to be the destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin at the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria.

Terror suspects arrested in Tunisia as four wounded Britons flown home

By The Guardian

Four Britons seriously injured in Friday’s terrorist massacre in Tunisia are being flown home for treatment on a military transporter as local officials announced the arrest of suspected members of the network behind the attack.

French student charged with murder and links to a terrorist organisation

By The Guardian

A man arrested on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in the Paris area has been charged with murder and attempted murder as well as having links with a terrorist organisation.

Sid Ahmed Ghlam was taken into custody by police on Sunday after he called an ambulance having apparently shot himself in the leg. Investigators believe he was planning an “imminent” attack in Paris or the city’s suburbs.

Setbacks Press Shabab Fighters to Kill Inexpensively in Kenya

By Washington Post

They have lost their leader, their ports, their checkpoints and their territory.

They have lost thousands of men and much of their money.

They have no fleet of armored personnel carriers like Boko Haram’s. Or poppy fields like the Taliban’s. Or oil fields like the Islamic State’s.

In the pecking order of the world’s leading terrorist groups, the Shabab militants, based in Somalia, operate on a shoestring budget. But as the attack on a Kenyan university last week showed, they have become proficient in something terrible: mass murder on the cheap.

Jordan Executes 2 Prisoners After ISIS Killing Of Pilot

By The Huffington Post

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan's king rushed home Wednesday, cutting short a U.S. trip, to rally public support for even tougher strikes against the Islamic State group after the militants released a video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned to death in a cage.

The gruesome killing of 26-year-old Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, captured while participating in airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants, sparked outrage across the Middle East and anti-Islamic State protests in Jordan.

King Abdullah II, a staunch Western ally, returned home from a White House meeting with President Barack Obama during which both leaders affirmed their resolve to destroy the militants who have seized about one-third of Syria and Iraq.

Jordan believes the international community must intensify the campaign against Islamic State, said government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani. "This evil can and should be defeated," he said.

However, public opinion in Jordan has been ambiguous — growing demands for revenge against the militants have been mixed with misgivings about Jordan's role in a bombing campaign widely seen as serving Western interests.

The extremists, meanwhile, appeared to be goading Jordan. In Raqaa, the Islamic State group's de facto capital, the militants gleefully played al-Kaseasbeh's slaying on outdoor projectors, with some chanting "God is great," according to militant video posted online Wednesday that conformed to Associated Press reporting of the event.

In the 20-minute video, the pilot displayed signs of having been beaten, including a black eye. Toward the end of the clip, he is shown wearing an orange jumpsuit. He stands in an outdoor cage as a masked militant ignites a line of fuel leading to it.

The video, released on militant websites and bearing the logo of the extremist group's al-Furqan media service, featured the slick production and graphics used in previous Islamic State videos. It could not independently be confirmed by the AP.

After the video's release, a wave of condemnation washed across the Middle East, signaling that the Islamic State militants might have overplayed their hand by putting their brutality toward a fellow Muslim on display. Some said this could trigger a backlash among Sunni Muslims in the region, the main reservoir of potential IS supporters.

Abdullah al-Muhaysni, a prominent Saudi sheik with close links to jihadi groups, said on his Twitter account that while he believes those carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic State group deserve to be killed, the Jordanian pilot's immolation was too barbaric and generated sympathy for the man.

"After millions of Muslims were cursing every pilot, with this act they (IS) have made the burned one a symbol," the cleric wrote. "They made everyone who was reluctant to participate in the Crusader campaign (against IS) adjust his opinion and decide to participate."

At the same time, Jordan faces increasing internal and external threats from the militants. It borders areas of Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria. There also have been signs of greater support for the group's militant ideas among Jordan's young and poor.

Following the pilot's death, Jordan launched what it said would be a tough campaign against the Islamic State group. In a first response, Jordan executed Sajida al-Rishawi and Ziad al-Karbouly, two Iraqis linked to al-Qaida, government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani said. Another official said they were executed by hanging. Authorities said the pair would be buried later in Jordan.

Al-Rishawi had been sentenced to death after her 2005 role in a triple hotel bombing that killed 60 people in Amman orchestrated by al-Qaida in Iraq, the predecessor of the Islamic State group. Al-Karbouly was sent to death row in 2008 for plotting terror attacks on Jordanians in Iraq.

Islamic State group militants purportedly had demanded Jordan release al-Rishawi in exchange for the pilot. Over the past week, Jordan had offered to trade her, but froze any swap after failing to receive any proof that the pilot was still alive.

Jordan now believes that the airman was killed in the early days of January, said al-Momani, the government spokesman. He said the assessment is based on additional intelligence information but did not elaborate.

Al-Kaseasbeh had fallen into the hands of the militants when his F-16 crashed near Raqqa. He was the first airman participating in the U.S.-led bombing raids against militant positions in Syria and Iraq to be captured.

The pilot's father, Safi Yousef al-Kaseasbeh, urged his government to "take revenge for Muath and to take revenge for the country, even before Muath."

Late Tuesday, dozens of people chanting against Islamic State marched toward the royal palace in Amman. Waving a Jordanian flag, they chanted, "Damn you, Daesh!" — using the Arabic acronym of the group — and "We will avenge, we will avenge our son's blood."

Al-Kaseasbeh was from a tribal area in southern Jordan's Karak district. The tribes are considered a mainstay of support for the monarchy, but the pilot's capture strained that relationship. During the weeks of uncertainty about his fate, relatives criticized the government's handling of the crisis and Jordan's participation in the anti-Islamic State group alliance.

However, the tone has changed since the announcement of his death, with family members and other Jordanians speaking out against the militants.

"No religion accepts such an act," said Amman resident Hassan Abu Ali. "Islam is a religion of tolerance. They (IS militants) have nothing to do with Islam. This is a criminal act."

Across the Middle East, religious and political leaders offered angry denunciations and called for blood as some on television wept when talking about the pilot.

The head of Sunni Islam's most respected seat of learning, Egypt's Al-Azhar, described the militants as enemies of God and the Prophet Muhammad, saying they deserved the Quran-prescribed punishment of death, crucifixion or the chopping off of their arms.

"Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life," Ahmed al-Tayeb, Al-Azhar's grand sheik, said in a statement, adding that by burning the pilot to death, the militants violated Islam's prohibition on the mutilation of bodies, even during wartime.

The Islamic State group has released a series of gruesome videos showing the beheading of captives, including two American journalists, an American aid worker and two British aid workers. Tuesday's was the first to show a captive being burned alive.

The latest video was released three days after another video showed the purported beheading of a Japanese journalist, Kenji Goto. A second Japanese hostage was apparently killed earlier last month.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a California Republican, said after a meeting with the king that Abdullah had been visibly angry and promised to retaliate against the militants.

"They're starting more sorties tomorrow than they've ever had. They're starting tomorrow," Hunter told the Washington Examiner in an interview published online Tuesday night.

Hunter added the king also said: "The only problem we're going to have is running out of fuel and bullets."

Islamic State video claims to show burning death of Jordanian pilot

By The Washington Post

The Islamic State released a video on Tuesday that purports to show a Jordanian pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, being burned alive by his captors.

According to the SITE monitoring group, which follows militant Web sites, the 22-minute video, titled “Healing of the Believers’ Chests,” was released on social media even as Jordan struggled to learn his fate.

Shortly after the video appeared online, Jordanian state TV reported that the pilot was killed on Jan. 3. It gave no further details on how the date was determined, but it suggested that it was new information because Jordanian officials sought “proof of life” evidence from the Islamic State as recently asearlier this week.

The killing appears to mark an effort by the Islamic State to present increasingly gruesome acts. Previously, the group decapitated its captives and then showed the head sitting on top of the body. Execution by decapitation in the Arab world, especially in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, is not uncommon.

Burning the pilot to death would represent a stunning escalation.

President Obama, speaking to reporters in Washington, said he was not yet briefed on the details of the video, but he called it “just one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity” of the Islamic State.

Hours earlier, before the release of the video, Secretary of State John F. Kerry met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and the country’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, as part of a visit to sign a deal for further U.S. aid to Jordan. The Jordanian officials in Washington had no immediate comment on the video.

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in an e-mail that the U.S. government was aware of the video and that “the intelligence community is working to confirm its authenticity.”

“The United States strongly condemns ISIL’s actions, and we call for the immediate release of all those held captive by ISIL. We stand in solidarity with the government of Jordan and the Jordanian people,” she added.

The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS or ISIL,released a video over the weekend that appeared to show the beheading of Kenji Goto, a Japanese journalist.

The video did not mention Kaseasbeh’s fate. However, the Islamic State had previously said it would kill both Kaseasbeh and Goto if Jordan failed to meet a Thursday deadline to release an Iraqi woman convicted of a role in 2005 bombings that killed 60 people in Jordan’s capital, Amman.

The pilot was captured by the Islamic State in December, after his plane crashed in Syria during a bombing run. Although the Islamic State claimed that it had shot down his plane, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Lisa Brackenbury, a Central Command spokeswoman, said in December that while “a thorough investigation will be conducted, this was an aircraft crash and not the result of enemy action.”

Late last year, the Islamic State posted social media images of Kaseasbeh, 26, surrounded by masked militants, as his captors pulled him from a body of water.

According to SITE, the video shows “media footage of Jordan’s involvement in the U.S.-led coalition” against the Islamic State. Then, the video shows Kaseasbeh, with a black eye, “discussing Jordan’s operation in a news-style monologue.” The video then juxtaposes images of the pilot surrounded by militants, and images of the aftermath of bombings.

“At the end of the video, [Kaseasbeh] stands inside of a cage and is burned alive by fighters,” SITE writes.

Reuters reported that the head of Jordan’s armed forces personally notified Kaseasbeh’s family of the pilot’s death.

The killing risks undermining a U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, which has seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Jordan has absorbed a flood of refugees fleeing the militants from the civil war in Syria and the uprisings in Iraq. Jordan’s air force and intelligence agencies are active, public partners in the U.S. coalition against the Islamic State.

The capture of the Jordanian pilot, however, sparked an antiwar movement calling for Amman to pull out of the coalition. Kaseasbeh is from a large and influential tribe centered in Karak, a province south of Amman, and his people have been staging protests in front of government buildings. The demonstrators have stressed not only the pilot’s capture, but the growing number of Syrian civilians caught in the bombings.

The Jordanian government said last week it was prepared to swap a prisoner sentenced to death for her role in the 2005 Amman hotel bombings for the Jordanian pilot.

Jordan’s sensational offer to free the suicide bomber, an Iraqi whose device failed to explode, illustrated the tremendous pressure that Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his government have faced over the pilot’s capture.

Last week, Jordanian Foreign Minister Judeh said his government insisted that the Islamic State offer “proof of life” that the pilot was alive before they released the Iraqi woman, who is serving a sentence on death row.

Judeh tweeted last week, “Unfortunately we have heard nothing.”

As the deal appeared to fall apart last week, the Islamic State released an audio recording during the stalled negotiations threatening to kill the pilot.

The Jordan pilot’s release was being sought at the same time that diplomats and families pleaded for the lives of two Japanese hostages, a journalist and an adventurer, both of whom were subsequently beheaded by the Islamic State.