By Michael Georgy and Tala Ramadan
(Reuters) -The radical Islamic State group, which once imposed a reign of terror over millions of people in Syria and Iraq, has been implicated in the New Orleans truck attack that killed 15 people and injured about 30 on New Year’s Day.
The suspect, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas who once served in Afghanistan, was flying an Islamic State flag during the assault.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that the FBI reported to him that Jabbar had posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by Islamic State.
Following are facts about the movement, considered by analysts to be more violent and extremist than al Qaeda.
RECENT OPERATIONS
The Islamic State group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for an attack on a military base in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland a day earlier, the group posted on its Telegram channel.
In its statement, Islamic State said the attack was conducted by 12 militants and two booby-trapped vehicles, adding that it killed more than 20 military personnel from the Puntland forces and injured dozens of others.
Though largely crushed by a U.S.-led coalition several years ago, IS has managed some major attacks while seeking to rebuild.
They include an assault on a Russian concert hall in March 2024, killing at least 143 people, and two explosions that killed nearly 100 people in the Iranian city of Kerman in January.
It also claimed responsibility for an assault by suicide attackers on a mosque in Oman last year, killing at least nine people.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to re-establish capabilities in Syria after the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad but said that the United States is determined not to let that happen.
Aside from its bloody operations in the Middle East, Islamic State has also inspired lone wolf attacks in the West.
In August 2024 authorities said that a 19-year-old Austrian suspected of masterminding a planned attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna had vowed allegiance to the leader of Islamic State.
HISTORY
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the IS “caliphate” held sway over a wide area of Syria and Iraq, imposing death and torture on opponents of its radical brand of Islam. Its fighters repeatedly defeated both countries’ armies and carried out or inspired attacks in dozens of cities around the world.
Its then leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by U.S. special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.
The caliphate collapsed in Iraq, where it once had a base only a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria after a sustained military campaign by a U.S.-led coalition.
The new leader, known by the pseudonym Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, remains shrouded in secrecy.
NEW TACTICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
IS has switched tactics since the collapse of its forces and a string of other setbacks in the Middle East.
Once based in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, from where it sought to rule like a centralised government, the group took refuge in the hinterlands of the two fractured countries.
Its fighters are scattered in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in IS heartlands.
The movement went underground with sleeper cells that launch hit-and-run attacks, according to an Iraqi government security adviser who helps to track IS.
Some foreign fighters fled Iraq for countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan. Most have joined Islamic State’s Khorasan branch (ISIS-K), named after an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
It is active along Iran’s borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Sanaullah Ghafari, the 29-year-old leader of the Afghan branch of IS, has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network, capable of operations far from its bases in Afghanistan’s borderlands.
AFRICA
Islamic State – often called ISIS, ISIL or the pejorative Daesh – has also made its mark in parts of Africa.
In Uganda, militants from the IS-connected Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) staged a series of attacks including a massacre at a boarding school, the murder of a honeymooning couple and a village raid that killed at least three people.
The group, which started as an uprising in Uganda, has largely moved operations to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has staged multiple attacks.
Several other groups have pledged allegiance to IS in West Africa and across the Sahel. Affiliates have control of large areas of rural Mali, Niger, northern Burkina Faso and into North Africa.
In January 2023 the U.S. military carried out an operation that killed a senior IS leader in northern Somalia. The U.N. fears militant groups could exploit the political instability in Sudan, which is gripped by a civil war.
OVERALL STRENGTH
The U.S. National Counterterrorism Center has said that the threat posed by IS and militant group al Qaeda “is at a low point with the suppression of the most dangerous elements”.
But it went on to warn that half of IS’s branches are now active in insurgencies across Africa and “may be poised for further expansion”.
It said the group had lost three overall leaders and at least 13 other senior operatives in Iraq and Syria since early 2022 “contributing to a loss of expertise and a decline in ISIS attacks in the Middle East”.
(Additional reporting by Catherine CartierEditing by Michael Perry and David Goodman)
