Belgium police raided ten locations where it was suspected that home-grown jihadists returning from Syria were planning terror acts. One location was in the town of Verviers, where two suspected terrorists were killed after a shootout, and the others were spread across the capital city Brussels, which is also the capital city of the European Union.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) gave one of the Charlie Hebdo jihadi killers $20,000 three years ago to conduct terror operations abroad, according to two unnamed counterterrorism officials speaking to ABC News on Thursday.
Both the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, or ISIL) and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have claimed responsibility for last week’s terrorist attack against the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Criticism is mounting against French officials for not doing more to prevent Wednesday’s terrorist attack by means of closer surveillance of the two brothers who carried out the attack.
One of the two French jihadist brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo killings had in the past personally met with deceased chief Al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, according to a senior member of Yemen’s intelligence services who told Reuters
Charlie Hebdo editor and cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier, also known as Charb, appeared on a hit list in the March 2013 issue of al-Qaeda’s Inspire propaganda magazine. Twitter accounts posted the same picture on Wednesday, but with a huge red X over Charbonnier’s picture.
In September, the al-Houthi militias moved south and captured Sanaa, the nation’s capital, ousting the Sunni-led government. Since then, they’ve continued to take control of additional mainly Sunni provinces, and it’s now thought that the al-Houthis control about 70% of the army’s capabilities.
