27-Aug-17: On British and Belgian streets - terrorist attacks, religious declarations, fast responses

The child is Palestinian Arab, and so is the incitement. But the message
has reached Europe and European targets and it's not directed just at Jews or Israelis

Everyone in this incident is of course innocent until determined by law to be guilty, and there's no terrorism involved until the police say there is, and no one should draw inferences about the role that this or that or any religious doctrine played in the events of this past Friday.

A terror suspect drove at police outside Buckingham Palace and yelled 'Allahu akbar' while reaching for a 4ft sword before he was arrested by three unarmed officers. The 26-year-old from Luton was wrestled to the ground and incapacitated with CS gas by the officers, two of which suffered injuries, at about 8.30 pm... Metropolitan Police said the suspect had been arrested under the Terrorism Act and was currently in custody in a central London police station... As three unarmed PCs exited the van and approached the blue Toyota Prius, the suspect reached for a 4ft sword in the footwell. [Daily Mail, August 26, 2017]

A lone wolf? Of course:

Commander Dean Haydon, the head of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, said: 'I would like to pay tribute to the bravery and professionalism of these officers who quickly brought this incident under control... Officers from the Counter Terrorism Command are now investigating and searches are being carried out in the Luton area today.
'We believe the man was acting alone and we are not looking for other suspects at this stage. 'While we cannot speculate on what the man was intending to do - this will be determined during the course of the investigation - it is only right that we investigate this as a terrorist incident at this time. [Daily Mail, August 26, 2017]

That was then. Today it looks different:

A second man has been arrested over a suspected terrorist attack outside Buckingham Palace, during which police were attacked by a man armed with a sword. A 30-year-old man was apprehended by officers at an address in west London on Sunday morning, Scotland Yard said. Police are carrying out a search in the area...  The second man was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism and was taken into custody. The arrest was carried out by officers from the Met’s counter-terrorism command... Police initially believed the 26-year-old man acted alone and said their investigation would look into the first arrested man’s mental health. Some other incidents thought to have been terror attacks have later turned out to have been driven by mental health problems.["Second man held after sword attack at Buckingham Palace", The Guardian, August 27, 2017]

It's been a busy weekend:

The assault in London came just two hours after a knifeman attacked patrolling soldiers in Brussels in what authorities said was an "attempted terrorist murder". Belgian prosecutors said the attacker yelled "Allahu akbar" when he rushed at the soldiers from behind and struck them with a knife, prompting one of them to open fire. The assailant -- a Belgian national of Somali origin born in 1987 -- was shot and died shortly afterwards in hospital, a prosecutors' statement said. Granted Belgian nationality in 2015 after arriving in the country in 2004, he was not known for any terror-related activities, although he had an assault and battery charge from February on his record, authorities confirmed. Police later raided his home in Bruges, in northwest Belgium. One of the soldiers was slightly hurt in the attack which Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said had been carried out by a "lone individual"... [AFP (France), August 27, 2017]

The Independent UK on Saturday adds that the Brussels stabber

"was in the possession of a firearm replica and two Quran books... The federal prosecutor’s office has handed the investigation to a specialist anti-terrorist judge and the case has been classed as “attempted terrorist murder”.

From Gaza, a religious leader who preaches the kind of attack
Europeans are now experiencing [Image Source]

The same article goes on to speculate on root causes:

Isis has been intensifying calls for terror attacks on the countries bombing it as part of the US-led coalition, issuing detailed advice on carrying out stabbings, vehicle rammings and making explosives.
Officials, including [British] security minister Ben Wallace, have warned that the threat is increasing as Isis loses territory in Iraq and Syria, with the group turning to attacks as a means of maintaining momentum and publicity. “I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate,” Mr Wallace said last week, echoing concerns raised by analysts across Europe.
Brussels was the location of the first Isis-linked attack in Europe, where a militant killed four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in May 2014. [Independent UK]

A handful of tentative conclusions.

• Lone wolf attacks, it's increasingly clear, often turn out to be anything but. 
• And attacks of the kind which began with massive incitement among Palestinian Arabs - in their schools, in their mosques and in the chambers of their political leaders - against Jews in Israel over the past 3 years more and more appear to be replicated on the streets of Europe. The range of their targets has greatly widened.
• For Israelis, it's hard not to notice how quick-witted, fast moving security officials on those European streets are being (entirely correctly) praised while the equivalent actions done in Israel by Israeli security officials have come in for withering criticism in previous years... from Europe.

21-Jun-17: An explosion in a Belgian train station: Do the news agencies realize this was not someone trying to kill himself?

Brussels: The attacker (in the background) and Tuesday's
explosion [Image Source]

Belgium, which has more reason than most other parts of Europe to be deeply concerned about terror-minded Islamists, is trying today to make sense of an explosion in its most important train station yesterday (Tuesday).

Here's how the events were depicted by one of the world's most influential news packagers:

Belgian soldiers have shot a man suspected of being a would-be suicide bomber at Brussels Central Station, officials say. He was shot after reportedly setting off a small explosion and no-one else is believed to have been injured. Prosecutors later said the man had died. They are treating the incident as a terrorist attack. According to Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, quoting prosecutors, the man who was shot was wearing a rucksack and a bomb belt. He detonated a device when he attracted the attention of soldiers in the station, the paper says. ["Suspected suicide bomber shot at Brussels railway station", BBC, June 20, 2017]

They're careful, the BBC people. But careful readers will be left wondering about what isn't stated.

• If the man was going to commit suicide, why in a public place? Could it be that suicide was not actually his goal? Was he actually a murderer? Or a murder-minded terrorist? If so, why confuse and mislead by saying he was committing suicide? He made himself into a human bomb and that is what we owe to ourselves and victims past and future to call him and those like him. We explain the thinking here: "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs".
• And by the way, the bomb's effect appears to have been enhanced by nails, making it "similar to the bombs used in the attacks at Brussels airport and on the city's metro that killed 32 people in March 2016." That's from Reuters mid-Wednesday morning (here). Those nails, in our view, are far more relevant and important to characterizing the killer than calling him "suicide bomber", a term we utterly abhor. They are put into bombs so as to cruelly rip apart the flesh of  the innocent victims. Our daughter was murdered by terrorists who attacked the patrons of a pizzeria in Jerusalem with a nail-and-shrapnel-enhanced bomb.
• The Brussels killer caused a small explosion, and then "later" he died. Did the explosion do him in? Or was it the Belgian soldiers who, at some point in these presumably fast-moving events, opened fire and shot him? The BBC report doesn't say. But clearly once he was shot dead, no one else was going to be hurt by him. That's a very good thing.
• The word "terrorist" gets into this BBC report only because the BBC was able to quote Belgian "prosecutors" who called it that. Does the BBC lack the discernment to be able to characterize terrorists as terrorists? No, of course not; it's self-imposed "know-nothing"-ness as a careful reading read of the politically-hyper-correct BBC "Editorial Guidelines: Language when Reporting Terrorism" shows. The BBC editors have far less difficulty or reluctance reaching conclusions on how to characterize a million and one other things; that's why we think of them as a news-reporting source.

This morning (Wednesday) there are additional details to ponder.

Numerous sources report that the fast-acting Belgians "neutralized" the attacker; it's a word that when Israel uses it (to mean killing or stopping an attacker in the course of a terror attack) attracts criticism of Israel.

The unnamed attacker, called "a Moroccan national who was not wanted for terror offences" [here] , is reported to have been yelling "Allahu Akbar" as he ran towards a soldier.

Reuters, around day-break today. reported that Belgium's counter-terrorism police are "probing the identity" of the man shot dead yesterday by "troops guarding a Brussels railway station after he set off explosives that failed to injure anyone":

• "We consider this a terrorist attack," prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt told reporters, declining comment on witness accounts that the man had shouted Islamist slogans before detonating what witnesses said were one or two devices in luggage...
• The Belgian capital, home to the headquarters of Nato and the European Union, has been on high alert since a Brussels-based Islamic State cell organised the attack that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015. Four months later, associates of those attackers killed 32 people in their home city. Since then, attacks in France, but also in Germany, Sweden and, most recently, in Britain, have been carried out in the name of the Syria-based Islamist militant group by other young men, many of them locals, raising fears of more violence in a city where almost a quarter of the population of 1.2 million are Muslim...
• [S]moke pouring through Central Station and a shared awareness of Islamic State attacks in the city last year and more recently in Britain, France and elsewhere, sent evening commuters racing for cover...
• Witnesses spoke of a man who shouted Islamist slogans, including "Allahu akbar" - God is greater - in Arabic, in an underground area of the station still busy with commuters making their way home and seemed to set off one or two small blasts...
• Rail worker Nicolas Van Herrewegen told Reuters that he was heading downstairs toward the underground platforms that serve long-distance and suburban lines running under the city center. "There was a man shouting, and shouting and shouting," he said. "He was talking about the jihadists and all that and then at some point he shouted: 'Allahu akbar' and blew up the little suitcase he had next to him. People just took off."
• ...As Prime Minister Charles Michel consulted his security advisers, the national alert was maintained at its second highest level. Michel, who convened a National Security Council meeting for 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on Wednesday, tweeted his thanks to the security forces and railway staff for their professionalism and courage. Mainline trains were running through the station by the morning rush hour, but not stopping. The adjacent metro station was open as normal, the transport authorities said. ["Belgium investigates station bomber fatally shot by soldiers", Reuters, June 21, 2017]

We agree with Belgium's prime minister: it's good that his country's security personnel opened fire promptly and, acting with "professionalism and courage", killed the man and neutralized the immediate danger.

We hope Israeli diplomats remind Mr Michel of his welcome plain-spokenness the next time Belgium joins with Israel's critics in absurdly - cheaply - accusing the IDF and Israel's other security forces of "extra-judicial execution" and "disproportionate force". The Belgians don't think they engaged in those problematic behaviours yesterday, and they're right. And so is Israel when its security people put the highest immediate priority on stopping an attacker in the shortest time before he achieves his barbaric goal.

Which, to remind ourselves, is never suicide.

The politically-inspired squeamishness of the BBC notwithstanding, everyone with brains in her head understands that attackers like yesterday's in the Brussels train station and Monday's would-be bomber on Paris' Champs-Elysees (killed when he rammed his car, filled with explosive and weapons, into a French police convoy - no innocent people were injured) are motivated by religious doctrine.

And whether they are genuine lone wolves or working in packs, the inspiration, incitement and encouragement for acts of terror in the most-public places possible overwhelmingly comes from Islamic preachers.

Whether this means terrorism does or does not have something to do with Islam is a non-trivial question if we seriously want to defeat the savages and the dangers they pose to our children and our societies. We're convinced the answer is obvious for anyone thinking outside the blinkers of political correctness about those threats.

21-Nov-16: German experts "discover" that Islamist terrorists are "being trained" to come into Europe as asylum seekers

Asylumn seekers arrived in Germany [Image Source]

Whether or not there are genuinely new disclosures here, the article published  a week ago on the website of Deutsche Welle ("Germany’s international broadcaster [where] 3,000 employees and freelancers from 60 countries work") is sober and plain-spoken even if its conclusions are emerging a little late.

'Islamic State' reportedly training terrorists to enter Europe as asylum seekers | Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016 | Germany's spy agency has warned that the "Islamic State" (IS) is infiltrating refugee groups to get into Europe. Officials and analysts are now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early. | On November 13 last year, three teams of militants from the so-called "Islamic State" (IS), armed with Kalashnikovs, stormed the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and several pubs in Paris. The rampage left 130 people dead, 85 of them in Bataclan, where the band, the Eagles of Death Metal, was playing.
Meanwhile, investigations have revealed that all nine men involved in the attacks had traveled to Europe together with the stream of refugees that entered the continent in 2015. According to German weekly "Welt am Sonntag," the country's spy agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has warned that IS is specifically training terrorists to merge with asylum seekers looking for safer havens in Europe. The report's authors say that the BND suggests that terrorists train potential attackers on how to answer questions during border interrogations so they can prove their credibility as refugees. The spy agency has refused to comment on this matter. Responding to an email query by DW, an agency press spokesman said: "Basically, the BND communicates its information only to the German government or to responsible bodies of the German parliament in confidential sessions." Many refugees have fled from IS terror in regions like Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq...

A million immigrants arrived in Germany last year, and Muslim organizations assert [here] that "at least" 800,000 of them are Muslim. They keep coming in large numbers that have no precedent even as news stories about the massive influx of 'asylum seekers' disappear from news sites and television screens.

Germany's total population was about 80 million five years ago. It's currently about 82 million. An estimate quoted here suggests that Germany was home, as of the end of 2015, to 5,945,000 Muslims. Pew Research says [here] France has 4.7 million Muslims, and that Germany has slightly more,

The European Commission, aware of how much misinformation and disinformation accompanies this issue, publishes a valuable though laconic document entitled "Asylum quarterly report". Using notably dry language, its most recent issue published [here] in September offers some startling data:

• The number of first-time asylum seekers arriving in the European Union's 28 countries during the month of September 2015 alone was 170,825. (We're selecting September to enable a comparison to be made. Otherwise, September has no special significance.) Of those, 47,185 sought asylum in Germany, representing about 28% of the entire human 'asylum seeking' tidal wave now arriving at Europe's shores.
• The same numbers for the month of September 2016, a year later show a total of 101,765 arrived in all the 28 countries taken together. That's notably down on a year earlier, But of those, no fewer than 76,320 came to Germany. That's 75% of the entire EU number. 
• If that tidal wave of 'asylum seekers' is subsiding, as the greatly diminished amount of news coverage might imply, there's simply no sign of it in Germany. 
• (The numbers for all 28 European countries are on display in this dynamic online table. If these stats interest you, this is an excellent and authoritative source,)

Asylum seekers in Berlin [Image Source: Uriel Heilman/JTA]

When Islamists carried out shocking terrorist attacks in Paris almost exactly a year ago ["14-Nov-15: The Friday 13th terror assault on Paris"], European and German public officials were anxious to downplay - even to deny - any connection between such outrages and the flood of Muslim "asylum seekers".

Thus, for instance, an un-named "source in Germany's federal police" quoted in an Israeli report a few days after the coordinated massacres that took the lives of 130 people and injured an astounding 400 more at the Stade de France, numerous Parisian cafés and restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in the centre of the French capital.

"That is what I fear, people on the right side of political spectrum confusing the refugee problem with the Islamic terrorism problem, even though there is no connection," admitted a source in Germany's federal police... [i24news.tv, November 15, 2015]

No connection, he said? Did he have any actual idea at the time? Does he now? When Germany's government officials say a year later that they are "now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early", the realists among us can only offer them the best of luck.

And for a European reaction, consider this brief extract from a news report published in a respected news source in the wake of the Paris savagery:

The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned Europe against confusing refugees and terrorists, asking the public not to “give in to such basic reactions”. And speaking to the AFP News Agency, a Syrian refugee named Ghaled said he wished the empathy for the scores killed Paris could be translated to empathy for the hundreds of thousands dead in his home country... ["Paris attacks: Syrian refugees put shootings in French capital in perspective", The Independent (UK), November 16, 2015]

A year on and "confusing refugees and terrorists" turns out not to have been such a "basic" reaction.

That DW report we mentioned above goes on to provide a platform for some German voices that don't seem the least bit surprised by what's just been conceded:

Regardless, the fact that IS terrorists have slipped into the continent with hundreds of thousands fleeing from war in the Middle East is nothing new, says Susanne Schröter, expert on Islamic terrorism at Frankfurt University. "This was known since the beginning. I warned about such a possibility even before there were any examples of terrorists slipping in," she told DW. "This is because IS announced that it would send attackers to the continent through the route which refugees were taking. At the time, politicians denied this," she added, referring to over 1 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, who landed in Europe last year. The situation in European countries like Germany, which took in over 840,000 refugees in 2015, was difficult. Border controls had to be given up and many of those coming in could not be registered by authorities properly, compounding the problem, Schröter said... [Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016]

The DW article goes on to provide plenty of exposure to the more conventional sort of European and German viewpoint. For instance (and these bullet points are all direct quotes):

• "The steady flow of refugees at the time also unleashed a sequence of violent attacks against asylum seekers, especially in the states of former East Germany. "Our leaders thought, if we now admit that there could be terrorists among refugees, then it would serve as fodder for right-wing populists and lead to more anti-migrant feelings. So they played it down, but ultimately that was not the right thing to do," the analyst said.
• "Bataclan was not the last target on the list of attacks in Europe. A major attack on Brussels' main airport and an underground station on March 22 this year killed 32 people and wounded many others. 
• "Smaller knife attacks and a suicide explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach shook the country and Europe. 
• "Most of these attackers were refugees themselves or had contacts with asylum seekers, highlighting the fact that the newcomers were especially vulnerable to terrorist recruiters. "There are different kinds of people who come in as refugees. They have different political backgrounds and there are some who are close to IS, and some who have fled from IS," said Schröter.
• "Most of the asylum seekers who come to Europe are young men, who are disillusioned when they land in Europe, because smugglers have promised them something completely different, like more money, a house and a car, Schröter said. 
• "The long registration and waiting process until they finally know what is going to happen to them, adds to the discontent, she explained. Many people simply leave refugee homes and never return, and terror groups and Islamic fundamentalist organizations, like Salafists, use this to their advantage and recruit young people to stage attacks.
• [Schröter says] "the state will have to monitor people more closely. The possibility of terror attacks and cyber invasions has now prompted the German spy agency BND and the domestic intelligence organization, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, to plan a 73 million euro ($78 million) project for supervising internet and telecom messaging services. The agencies have not revealed exact plans, but according to a combined report by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" daily, and public broadcasters WDR and NDR, the BND wants to react faster to messages sent on mobile services like "WhatsApp." 
• "The agencies justify the project, called "Panos," by saying that the "security of Germany and its citizens can no longer be taken for granted. [Can anyone's today?]
• "It is likely that the heightened supervision of communication channels will affect normal citizens and refugees not involved in terrorism. But, as Schröter says, "considering the present situation, there could be nothing worse than a big terror strike, not only because of the possible victims, but also because of the effect it will have. And that is why everything needs to be done so that there is no big attack."

Forgive us, but given the scale of the threat and the indications that serious-minded malevolents with Islamist doctrine as their guide have targeted their towns and public places, these German voices strike us as being sadly indecisive.

For their sakes, we hope we're wrong.

10-Apr-16: In Europe, jihadists hiding in plain sight

Krayem: His family are "stunned"
[Image Source: A 2015 Swedish blog]

This past Friday afternoon in a corner of Brussels, the Belgian capital, police arrested five people, two of them considered "Europe’s most wanted fugitives" as well as

hardened operatives of ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for both the Brussels attacks on March 22, which killed 32 people, and the Paris attacks on November 13, which killed 130. [TIME Magazine, April 8, 2016]

The two are Mohamed Abrini, 31, and Osama Krayem, 23.

Krayem's background sounds ominously familiar. Raised in Rosengard, a section of the Swedish city of Malmo ["28-Sep-12: Malmo's beleaguered Jews have more to worry about this morning"] whose Jews we described four years ago as living in a state of siege - and which appears to have continued going downhill since then. Associated Press reports this morning that that "Krayem comes from a Palestinian family" and that, despite the violence and bigotry that has put Malmo on the map in the past few years, his family "was stunned by his turn toward extremism" while acknowledging that "many other guys" from the area had become "foreign fighters".

Krayem's victimhood is embellished in that AP report via a quote from a Rosengard social activist who operates a program to help local immigrants integrate into Swedish society: the accused mass-murderer, he says, is

well-known to the local police for multiple criminal activities like thefts [and] was the perfect target for radicalization — no job, no future, no money. [AP, April 9, 2016]

Krayen's recent trajectory closely resembles what is known about several other of the jihadists who carried out the Friday 13th massacre in Paris last November. He joined the ISIS forces in the ongoing Arab-on-Arab Syrian bloodbath. Then, for reasons not yet explained, in September 2015 he managed to sneak back into Europe amid

the mammoth influx of migrants last year, landing on the Greek island of Leros... Carrying a false Syrian passport in the name of Naim El-Hamed, he made his way to a refugee center in Germany, where Salah Abdeslam collected him on Oct. 3 and brought him back to Brussels. [Source]

We have some comments about Abrini that we will post later.

Right now, the most urgent issue these arrests raise is - what conditions made it possible for the surviving members of the Paris jihad attack group to melt into the background in Sweden, France and Belgium and avoid arrest until now, aided, as TIME's commentator put it, by a network of collaborators who hid them during a period of more than four months. They were, after all, the targets of Europe’s biggest manhunt in memory.

23-Mar-16: The morning after Brussels: Reflecting on the responses

When terrorism upends the lives of ordinary people, exacting a price that often ends up being paid over and again for years, its victims sometimes look around to see who, if anyone, understands what they have just been required to start enduring.

People who understand the insult, the pain, the grief, the loss, the sense of outrage and violation. And who understand the measures that victims expect their leaders to take so that something is learned from the awfulness. And so that the likelihood of it happening again, no matter to whom, will be reduced.

That understanding is not always easy to find.

In its place, as some victims of terror including many Israelis (we among them) have learned over the years, come advice and lectures from people who are often, themselves, unaffected in a personal sense by terrorist attacks. That advice, from the perspective of those who have been and often are its target, has frequently taken forms we find surprising, insensitive, unwise and occasionally outrageous.

To equip ourselves with some additional resilience for when the need next arises as it surely will, we have this morning culled a selection of expressions of understanding published in the wake of the savagery that took dozens of lives in Belgium yesterday.

In the selected quotes below, all published in the past 24 hours, much of the sentiment is understandably and thankfully humanitarian and emotional. They include words of encouragement and of outrage; determination and sympathy. (How much of it is genuine and sincere? Since these are politicians, that's not a fair or relevant question to ask.)

As people who have gotten to know terrorism from the victims' standpoint, who are we to deny its value? People reaching out to people, empathizing, sharing what we have in common, understanding, is not only one of the most effective things to do if we want to benefit the other. It's often the only thing that can be done.

Have a look down the list and please ask yourself, as we have today, whether, in each case, you could imagine a similar sentiment being expressed - but with Israel in place of Belgium.

• Washington stands with Belgium in the face of the "outrageous" attacks - Barack Obama, US President  [AFP]
• The Brussels attacks were "yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism."  - Barack Obama, US President  [US News]
• The attacks "have once again shown terrorism's global face." Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu [Associated Press]
• Those responsible for the "despicable" bombings should face justice - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [AFP]
• "His Majesty King Abdullah II condemns the terrorist attacks in Brussels" - Abdullah II, king of Jordan [Twitter]
• "This is a day of tragedy, a black day... [following the] deadliest attacks we have ever seen in Belgium" which were "blind, violent and cowardly... People were just going to work, to school and they have been cut down by the most extreme barbarity." The response? "We will continue to protect liberty, our way of life." - Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel [AFP]
• "Painful day for Brussels and all Europe. In Jordan with FM @NasserJudeh working together on counterterrorism #united" - Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, tweeting from Amman where our daughter's convicted murderer lives freely, unfettered by any counter-terror measures of which we are aware and in flagrant disregard of basic notions of justice [Twitter]. Ms Mogherini broke down in tears [link] at the end of her press conference with the Jordanian foreign minister yesterday. A photograph from some years ago [link] captures her standing Yasser Arafat, suggesting she knows more about terror than most European politicians. 
• "Terrorism knows no borders and is a plague to all of us... Correct education is the right answer to ignorance and extremism." Egypt's leading religious figure, Grand Mufti Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam [Associated Press]
• The terrorist attacks were "cowardly and odious" and Belgium would "respond together with firmness, calmness and dignity" - Philippe, king of the Belgians [ABC]
• The Eiffel Tower will be lit up in the colors of the Belgian flag - Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris [Twitter]
• "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted - and all the world that is concerned." - French president Francois Hollande [Associated Press]
• "What is necessary now is that we show our collective strength and uphold the values of freedom and solidarity." - Dutch King Willem-Alexander [Associated Press]
• We will fight terrorism "with all necessary means" after this "attack on our open democratic society." - The 28 EU leaders in a rare joint statement [AFP]
• The terrorist threat facing countries across Europe is "very real... We will never left these terrorists win." - David Cameron, prime minister of the UK [AFP]
• "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help." - David Cameron, prime minister of the UK [Twitter]
• "All solidarity now with EU, Belgium... Terrorists will never win: Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror!" - German Chancellor Angela Merkel via her chief of staff Peter Altmeier [Twitter]
• "I think we’ve got to recognize that the threat posed by the modern incarnation of terrorism is one that we have to be vigilant against. I know that Americans have every reason to be frightened by what they see." - Hillary Clinton, US Democratic Party presidential contender [Time]
• "Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was... Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!" - Donald Trump [Twitter]
• The Brussels attacks are "just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam... Radical Islam is at war with us." Ted Cruz, US Republican Party presidential contender [Time Magazine]
• The Brussels attacks are "another cowardly attempt to terrorize innocent civilians... [and] a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS." - Bernie Sanders, US Democratic Party presidential contender [Twitter]
• The blasts in Brussels are "a barbaric crime [that] confirms once again that terrorism knows no borders and threatens the peoples all over the world" - Russian President Vladimir Putin [US News]
• "All Australians condemn these cowardly terrorist attacks in Brussels. And the Belgian people have our thoughts, our prayers and our resolute solidarity in this battle against terrorism. They are utterly cowardly attacks, attacking innocent people, but we need to be constantly vigilant, vigilance is the key." - Malcolm Turnbull, prime minister of Australia [The Guardian]
• The beloved Belgian cartoon character Tintin is depicted in tears [AFP]

We continue to scan the online news media for quotable calls by political leaders for Belgium and the EU to exercise compromise, act with reasonableness and restraint, to avoid vengeance, to find a peaceful path, to keep right away from carrying out extrajudicial executions, not to take steps that could further destabilize the situation, to be proportionate in defending themselves from the jihadists.

We plan to let readers know the moment we find them. And yes, we would appreciate your help [send to thisongoingwar at gmail dot com].

22-Mar-16: Belgium's focus on Europe-based jihad just rose several notches

Candles and flowers are laid in tribute to the victims - outside the
Brussels stock exchange today [Image Source]

Just four days after Friday's arrest of an Islamist terrorist, Saleh Abdeslam, in Brussels, the city has found itself in the midst of serious drama... just as the Belgian government says (but only now admits) it expected.

Two massive explosions - one at the main international airport of Brussels at Zaventem a couple of minutes before 8:00 am, and a third in the Maelbeek subway station in the heart of the city a minute or two after 9:00 am -completely paralyzed the Belgian capital today.

At the time we are writing this, the updated count of losses [quoting "Explosions at Brussels Airport and Subway Kill 34", New York Times, today] is that 34 people are killed - 14 at the airport and 20 in the subway station. Many more are injured in the two attacks: more than 90 at the airport and more than 100 in the subway. Reports speak of children, of amputated limbs, of severe burns, and of the likelihood that the numbers will grow.

In the several hours that have passed since the first reports, the local authorities have gathered enough information to confidently define these as terror attacks. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, whom we mentioned here just a few days ago ["19-Mar-16: An arrest in Belgium sharpens the focus on Europe-based jihad"] spoke earnestly into national television cameras today, calling the attacks “blind, violent and cowardly.”

The impact on Belgium is wide and ongoing.

• From various reports, we see that Brussels' public transport system is shut down and the entire city is in a kind of lock-down state with residents being told to “stay where you are”, evidently via a government-authorized Twitter message. 
• Eurostar canceled all trains between Brussels and London. Thalys high-speed trains linking dozens of cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands were suspended [NY Times]
• Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has said Belgians should avoid making calls so that the city’s mobile network would not be as saturated as they evidently are, and to communicate via online messages instead. 
• Belgium's federal prosecutor, Frédéric Van Leeuw, says border controls have been strengthened and extra police officers had been mobilized. 
• Belgium’s official terror threat status was raised from three to four - the highest possible value. 
• Telegraph UK reports that the Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders expressed a concern that additional parties responsible for the killings today are still at large. 

There are, predictably, ripple effects that have not yet run their course.

• All flights into and out of the airport were cancelled right after the attack. An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels was diverted to another airport in mid-flight. 
• Staff at Belgium's nuclear power stations have been asked to leave the sites "for their own safety" [Telegraph UK today]. It appears, according to the same source, that several people "were recently caught using a hidden camera to monitor movements at the home of a leading Belgium nuclear research executive. The development suggested that terrorists were preparing to kidnap him in order to gain access to nuclear materials or to get into a power plant." There's another concern: "The explosion of a radioactive so-called dirty bomb is one of the chief fears of the security services and was thought to be a little outlandish until the discovery in Belgium."
• President Barack Obama said this afternoon: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." His Secretary of State, John Kerry, has told Belgium via his spokesperson on Twitter: "We are ready to support the investigation as appropriate." And "The United States stands with the people of Belgium." Donald Trump has said today that France and Belgium and other parts of Europe are "literally disintegrating". He predicts "many more" attacks. "In my opinion this is just the beginning, it's going to get worse and worse," he told Fox News. He reiterated his pledge to shut down America's border to Muslims "until we figure out what is going on... There's something going on. They're not assimilating into society, and there's something different," he said. "It's not our fault, it's their fault," he added, referring to Muslims." [Telegraph UK, today]
• Mr Trump placed some of the blame for the attacks on "no-go zones" in France and Belgium where, he said, police are afraid to enter
• France's president Francois Hollande said the Brussels savagery struck at "the whole of Europe" [AFP, today]. In a NY Times report, he says "Through the Brussels attacks, it is the whole of Europe that is hit". France ordered 1,600 additional police officers to patrol its borders, train stations, airports and ports. The Eiffel Tower will be lit with the colors of Belgium’s flag tonight.
• Pope Francis expressed his condolences [AFP]. The attacks, he said, are "blind violence, which causes so much suffering".

A handful of observations now about the way parts of the media are dealing with the harsh realities:

• Over at the BBC where using the word "terror" in news reports of jihadist barbarism of the sort that plagues our lives here is strictly controlled and mostly avoided [see "7-Aug-13: Political prisoners, political media"], it appears to have been a tumultuous day. Their lead story this morning appeared around 9:00 am London time under the heading "Brussels Zaventem airport and metro explosions 'kill at least 13'" [archived here], and had no mention of the word "terror". We and others noticed and criticized via Twitter which normally has little effect. Today however, some two hours later and with no fanfare or explanation, the same article (with the same URL) was given a new headline: "Brussels explosions: Many dead in airport and metro terror attacks" [archived here]. Fittingly, it calls the attacks terror - as it should.
• And confronted with the hideous horror of the pitiless bombings of ordinary people traveling places, a reporter ("mostly", he says) for The Times of London and The Economist tweets: "One of the ugliest rituals after any attack in Europe is the chorus of "we told you so!" from the Israeli right." That struck us as repugnant. We tweeted back: "That's the most serious fallout? For us, slavish avoidance of word "terror" in some news channels is both uglier and harmful". It fell on deaf ears, of course.
• And from the New York Times today, this cause-and-effect sound-bite:
  Few countries have been more vulnerable [in the wake of the huge influx of "undocumented migrants" as the New York Times delicately calls them] than Belgium. It has an especially high proportion of citizens who have traveled to Iraq, insular Muslim communities that have helped shield jihadists, and security services that have had persistent problems conducting effective counter-terrorism operations... 

A difficult day, and not yet ended.

UPDATE Tuesday March 22, 2016 at 7:30 pm: The Islamic State has claimed the Brussels attacks. The New York Times reports that:

The Islamic State-affiliated news agency has issued a bulletin claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks Tuesday in Brussels. The claim was disseminated on the group’s official channel on Telegram, a social media platform, and picked up by other official ISIS channels on Telegram and on Twitter. “Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the coalition against the Islamic State,” the statement says. “Islamic State fighters opened fire inside the Zaventem airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.”

19-Mar-16: An arrest in Belgium sharpens the focus on Europe-based jihad

Police raid in the Molenbeek section of Brussels, Belgium [Image Source]

Salah Abdeslam, the fugitive believed to be the only terrorist to survive after the savage Friday 13th Paris attacks last November, was captured by Belgian police on Friday.

They were tipped-off by a pizzeria owner whose suspicions were raised by an unusually large order: a "lucky break", a Politico analysis called it.

Three members of a family hiding him, named at this stage only as Abid A, Sihane A and Djemila M, have also been detained [The Independent, UK, today].

Abdeslam, it's thought, fled Paris immediately after the coordinated massacres ["14-Nov-15: The Friday 13th terror assault on Paris"] that took the lives of 130 people at the Stade de France, numerous cafés and restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in central Paris. More than 400 others were injured. He got back to Brussels, and successfully eluded a wide and urgent police search over the following months. In parts of the media, he came to be called "the most wanted man in Europe".

Today he was formally charged with "participation in terrorist murder". His lawyer says [The Guardian] he is "collaborating" with Belgian investigators and will fight extradition to France.

Abdeslam is 26, and described as a Belgian-born, French citizen of Moroccan ancestry. Associated Press calls him "a childhood friend of the suspected ringleader of the attacks... " Elsewhere, it is noted that a brother of Abdeslam's, Ibrahim, was one of the human bomb attackers at the Stade de France, and died there.

His apprehension

could give security and intelligence agencies an opportunity to interrogate Mr. Abdeslam about his ties to the Islamic State and how the attacks were planned and carried out, at a time when officials are saying that the Paris plot might have been larger and more elaborate than first thought. He was arrested three days after the police found his fingerprints in an apartment in another Brussels neighborhood. The authorities gave few details about how they had tracked him down, but the Belgian prosecutor’s office said it had also arrested three members of a family on charges of sheltering him... ["Arrested in Belgium, Suspect in Paris Attacks Plans to Fight Extradition", New York Times, March 19, 2016]

[Image Source: Bloomberg]

His arrest also gives hope to the victims of the Paris atrocities that a process focused on justice may happen. See this response from a French association of terror victims: "Communiqué du MPCT: Un espoir de justice pour les victimes du 13 novembre" (in French). The role of justice in the lives of terror victims is far too often an afterthought.

Molenbeek, the largely Muslim Brussels neighborhood mentioned in that report, and infamous for its crime and unemployment, is regarded (says AFP) as a "European hotbed of Islamist extremism" that "has long been a breeding ground for radicalism". In the week after the November massacres, Aljazeera, in an article headlined "A message from Molenbeek: 'We are not terrorists'", quoted Charles Michel, Belgium's prime minister, saying Molenbeek "was involved in almost every terrorist attack of recent years", and reporting that Jan Jambon, the Belgian interior minister, had pledged to "clean it up". In The Guardian, they called it "the Brussels borough becoming known as Europe's jihadi central".

A long and serious profile in The Atlantic during that same week described how

tiny Belgium has taken on an oversized role in the European theater of jihad. The country has provided a steady flow of fighters to ISIS in the Middle East... Belgium has just 11 million people, and Pew estimated that about 6 percent of the population was Muslim as of 2010. But Belgian and French nationals make up around a quarter of the Europeans who went to fight in Iraq in the mid-2000s... The central figure in Belgian militant Islamism is Fouad Belkacem, a 33-year-old preacher and founder of the group Sharia4Belgium. He was born in Belgium to Moroccan parents, and is a disciple of the British radical Islamist Anjem Choudary... Experts also say it is comparatively easy to acquire illegal guns in Belgium, making it an attractive base for operations... In particular, Belgian jihadism is concentrated in Molenbeek. It’s a neighborhood of nearly 100,000 people in Brussels, northwest of the city center, which has had a large Muslim population for many years. There are 22 known mosques in the district. Molenbeek shares some characteristics with the banlieues in French—densely populated, large immigrant populations, very high unemployment, complaints of inadequate government services, isolation from the central city and corridors of power... Interior Minister Jan Jambon added: “We don’t have control of the situation in Molenbeek at present.” ["What’s the Matter With Belgium?", November 17, 2016]

Unsurprisingly, the BBC report on the arrest manages, in its customary manner, to not mention the word "terror" once. (The suspect, it says, is wanted in connection with the "Paris attacks".) It quotes the French president Francois Hollande, speaking at a joint press conference with Belgium's prime minister Charles Michel saying he expected Abdeslam

to be extradited to France "as rapidly as possible" [and that] Abdeslam's arrest was an "important moment" but added that it was not the "final conclusion". "We must catch all those who allowed, organised or facilitated these attacks and we realise that they are a lot more numerous than we thought earlier and had identified," he said. [BBC, today]

Abdeslam is taken into custody [Image Source]

Who were those others and what might they have in common? Other sources, but strikingly not the BBC, offer answers. In fact, Hollande spoke of

"confirmed ties between the Paris attackers and Daesh [ISIS] and stressed that the current threat level is very high." [Sputnik, today]

In Molenbeek, meanwhile. there are reports today of ongoing tensions triggered by the arrests and the police activity:

Not only was access disrupted for locals but many are angry about the neighbourhood being labelled a breeding ground for Islamist violence. “They are tarring everyone with the same brush and forgetting that the Moroccan community, that has been here for 40-50 years, works really hard,” said Yacine, a young man from just outside Molenbeek. “To say that it is a jihadist hot-spot here, no! Look for them somewhere else!” [Euronews, today]

Plenty of photos and video clips of what the Express UK calls rocks and "missiles" being hurled at police.

And this from the Wall Street Journal:

Young Muslim men living in the district since the Paris attacks have expressed concern they may have trouble finding jobs because they fear potential employers could discriminate against them based on their Arabic names and because they are registered as living in Molenbeek... ["Brussels Neighborhood of Molenbeek Returns to the Spotlight", WSJ, today"]

 We fear they are right, but also that they are somewhat missing the point.

21-Nov-15: Quietly and with determination, Israel responds to the stabbers, shooters, rammers

Kiryat Gat is home to a multi-billion dollar Intel plant [Image Source]

Far from Brussels, where security is at historically-unprecedented levels in the wake of a very real Islamist threat and so is the media coverage, Israel's daily struggle with terror-minded stabbers, rammers and shooters - impelled by much the same explosive mix of religious zeal and savage bigotry, goes on.

A manhunt has been on for most of this evening - five hours of intense police activity - in a city in Israel's south that prefers to be remembered as the home of one of Intel's major micro-chip fabrication plants:

Four people, including a 13-year-old female, were wounded in a stabbing attack on King David Street in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat Saturday evening. Magen David Adom reported that the victims included the 13-year-old female, a 51-year-old male and two other females ages 44 and 56. All were in moderate condition after being evacuated to the hospital. A male teenage suspect was captured in the city a few hours after the attack; he originally fled the scene and some 250 policemen searched the area with guns drawn, on high alert. He was caught with a bload-soaked knife on the same street where the attack took place. Two of his friends gave him up to the authorities and he was subsequently identified as an illegal worker from Hebron... Roadblocks were erected at the entrances to Kiryat Gat for the duration of the search, effectively enforcing a complete lock down of the city. [Ynet, tonight]

From Israel National News:

The attack began near the city's soccer stadium and left four people wounded. The stabber managed to flee the scene, sparking a major manhunt, with security forces checking all vehicles entering and leaving the city... During their searches, police rescued a Bedouin resident of Segev Shalom who was attacked and lightly wounded by residents under the false belief that he was the terrorist... Israel Police Southern Commander Yoram Halevi announced the arrest of the terrorist, along with two other Arabs who had aided him in carrying out the attack. The terrorist has been identified as a Palestinian Arab teenager from a village near Hevron who was working illegally in Israeli sovereign territory. "The terrorist found a quiet, dark area in the yards of one of the (local) houses," Halevi said. "He hit and waited for the right time - most likely the early morning - to escape from the city."

No one expects him to be escaping soon. 

But as we noted earlier tonight, how long will it be before calls are heard for this latest stabber's release from behind Israeli bars on the now-familiar nonsense grounds that he's just a improperly-held political prisoner?

Meanwhile, we wonder how much they understand, down there in dark Hebron where tonight's knife-wielder started his journey to an Israeli prison cell, that Intel employs more than 9,900 Israelis at four cutting-edge Research and Development sites and at two world-class fabrication facilities, one in Jerusalem, Israel's thriving capital city, and one in Kiryat Gat.

17-Jan-15: Scenes from the warzones - Saturday update

Belgium, this week [Image Source]

Athens, today: AFP reports this evening that four people ("at least") were arrested in Athens today "as part of a probe into a jihadist cell that was dismantled in Belgium this week before it could carry out any attacks" according to a Greek police source. The arrests occurred in the Pangrati district of Athens in the middle of Saturday. They think, though there seems to be some doubt, that the arrested include Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of the cell planning the foiled attacks from Greece. These arrests come on top of dozens of others across Europe, in raids targetting Islamists.

Brussels, today: The BBC says uniformed soldiers were seen guarding Jewish schools and government buildings in Belgium today. Belgium's interior minister said his country "had to make use of all the forces at its disposal". The report quotes defence ministry officials saying 150 police are already in place, a figure that could double in the coming days until the situation is reviewed next week. Associated Press says they are currently protecting synagogues in Antwerp, the Jewish Museum in Brussels and other sites and include paratroopers, "the first time in 30 years that authorities used troops to reinforce police in Belgium’s cities".  Belgium's terror warning level now stands at 3, the second-highest level. Justice Minister Koen Geens said Saturday that “we hope the worst has been avoided but we need to prepare for the most difficult to come.”

London, Friday: An 18-year-old woman was arrested by anti-terror officers at Stansted Airport Friday on suspicion of terrorism offences. One British report quotes a Scotland Yard source saying she was taken to a central London police station for questioning on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts and membership of a banned organisation. It said authorities were not revealing at this stage where she was travelling from. The Daily Mail UK covers the same incident, and names "A-level student Silhan Ozcelik" who was 17 when she "went missing in October", and describes her as "Kurdish teenager, from Highbury Corner, North London."

Sydney, Friday: The Daily Telegraph reports that Australian authorities deported a man described as "a former Australian factory worker... who had also breached his visa" on Wednesday, and that he was promptly arrested in Malaysia on arrival there, on suspicion of running an Australian IS terror cell. Malaysia's Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division officials were waiting for the man when he arrived at Kuala Lumpur's International Airport Friday morning.  "The terror cell was reported to consist of the man and a married Malaysian couple who were also deported, on January 7, and also arrested on arrival [back in Malaysia]. They had reportedly travelled to Australia with their 14-month-old daughter [and were] recruiting Malaysian militants and sending them to Turkey and eventually Syria via Australia."

16-Jan-15: More scenes from the warzones

Europe's Jews and today's reality [Image Source]

Following on from this morning's post...

Paris, today: Twelve activist militants (three of them females) suspected of having provided "possible logistical support" to the acts of murder that took the lives of 17 people in last week's attacks in the French capital are being held by police in the Paris region, reports say. "Logistical support" is interpreted by the BBC (quoting a judicial source who told AFP) as giving weapons or vehicles to the killers.

France overnight: Gendarmes carried out raids in Montrouge, Chatenay-Malabry, Epinay-sur-Seine, Grigny (home town of the now-deceased Islamist Amedy Coulibaly) and Fleury-Merogis overnight (source). Their searches are guided, in part, by samples of DNA and the results of wire-taps.

The Gare de L'Est this morning - evacuated [Image Source]

Paris, today: The hugely busy Gare de l'Est railway station in Paris was evacuated for an hour this morning. Services resumed at 09:00 Paris time, Friday morning. The authorities are giving no further details at this stage (BBC), though we see references in the French media to the presence of the bomb squad. One observer notes (here) that in the French capital, its residents starting to become to terms with their city's fate, "The police, more than 80,000 in Paris alone, have been astonished to be cheered."

Madrid, today: A Spanish newspaper (quoted here) says Amedy Coulibaly spent three days in Madrid in early January, spending three days there. The assumption, given the scale of the arms cache in his apartment (here), is that it was not for tourism, and that there are people in Spain who may have something valuable to contribute to the investigation if the need is explained nicely enough to them. Coulibaly's companion Hayat Boumeddiene, sometimes referred to in the media as his wife, is known to have passed through Madrid on her way to Turkey about the same time, and then through Turkey to Syria on January 8.

Amsterdam, today: As was done in Belgium today, the only Orthodox Jewish school in the Dutch city of Amsterdam, the Jewish Children Community Cheder (says Jewish Chronicle, London) is shut down today "for security reasons".

UK: Not so surprisingly, "Community Security Trust patrols and additional police measures are in place in areas with high Jewish populations ahead of Shabbat." The Community Security Trust exists to provide "physical security, training and advice for the protection of British Jews. CST assists victims of antisemitism and monitors antisemitic activities and incidents. CST represents British Jewry to Police, Government and media on antisemitism and security. CST believes that the fight against antisemitism and terrorism is an integral part of safeguarding our wider democratic British society against extremism and hatred."

Nigeria, today: It's not happening in Europe but the Boko Haram practitioners of Islamist jihad in west Africa have been slaughtering people in incredible numbers, orders of magnitude greater than Europe's killings. It's reported today (Times of London) that their ambassador to the US has corrected the toll of Nigerians killed this past week in their ongoing war. Nigeria's military had said it was 150 people dead; turns out to have been about 2,000.

16-Jan-15: Scenes from the warzones

Belgium [Image Source]

The past 24 hours in the ongoing war in Europe...

Verviers, Belgium last night: Two armed men, evidently Islamists with plans for launching terrorist attacks on Belgian targets, were shot dead and another wounded by security people from Belgium's federal police after opening fire with automatic weapons on Thursday evening. Belgium is now on high alert. BBC quotes officials saying the shooters were part of a group that had returned to Belgium from fighting in Syria "and planned imminent attacks on police targets". In a search of the terrorists' premises - a flat above a bakery (source) - four Kalashnikov guns, bomb-making equipment and police clothing were seized.

Brussels, Belgium last night (as well as nearby towns Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Anderlecht and Schaerbeek): Searches were carried out overnight by security personnel hunting for additional embedded Islamist terrorists.

Antwerp and Brussels, Belgium this morning: Jewish schools were closed "after they were informed that they could be potential targets" according to the BBC quoting the Belgian newspaper Joods Actueel.

Zaventem, Belgium: Two Islamists suspected of involvement in acts of terrorism or planning them were arrested Thursday (source).

Across western Europe: CNN has a breaking report today "that the ongoing terror threat appears to involve up to 20 sleeper cells of between 120 to 180 people ready to strike in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. The source said that European Union and Middle East intelligence agencies identified an "imminent threat" to Belgium, possibly also to the Netherlands."

Montrouge, France: The suburban Paris apartment, rented on a short-term basis by Amedy Coulibaly, the jihadist killer who seized a kosher grocery store in Paris last Friday and cold-bloodedly murdered four of the unarmed Jews on the premises, turns out to have been an armaments repository. French police yesterday showed what they found there: "four Tokarev pistols similar to a pair found at the store, a revolver, and sticks of dynamite... mobile telephones, tear gas grenades, a flak jacket, binoculars, a flag similar to the ones used by the Islamic State (Isil), a copy of the Koran and a car rooftop beacon similar to those used by police" (source). Many thousands of Euros were spent in accmulating what the young thug had there.

Berlin, Germany: Overnight raids on Thursday/Friday by German security personnel involving "250 officers and three Special Operations commands carried out the raids on 11 homes" resulted "in the arrest a pair of Turkish men for planning a terrorist attack on Friday", (source)

More coming.