Suicide bombs rocked two Saudi Arabian cities on Monday, killing at least four security officers, wounding five other people – and coming just hours after authorities in a third city stopped a bomber just feet from the U.S. Consulate. Eid in particular is supposed to be a time of celebration and family.
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“This is a second Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, said Ammar al-Khafaji, a 50-year-old local from Karada district of Baghdad, where the attack happened.
On July 4 ISIS managed to hit where it hurts the most – Saudi Arabia.
In the midst of the celebrations though, one issue weighed on the minds of many faithful – the triple bomb attacks that rocked Saudi Arabia earlier this week. If violent extremists seek through their actions to create Islam as a force for nihilism in the contemporary age, let us pray with those who oppose them that the actions of the peaceful, the tolerant, the merciful will endure and triumph.
But while IS has claimed responsibility for Bangladesh’s worst-ever terror attack, their Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan insisted it was untrue.
On June 27, an IS affiliate carried out a series of attacks in Yemen’s southern port city of Mukalla, killing 43 people, mostly intelligence and security troops.
Pentagon officials have long warned that as the U.S. -led effort against ISIS’s grinds the proto-state straddling Iraq and Syria into rubble (it has lost 47% of its Iraqi territory, and 20% in Syria, U.S. officials say), ISIS backers would lash out with terror attacks far from the front lines.
“In Singapore, we have been blessed to see so many handsome moments in the month of Ramadan with so many instances of the Muslim community coming together, as a community, as families, and as individuals, to help others and to bring some joy to the less fortunate in their daily struggles, in the true spirit of Ramadan”, he said.
There have been Ramadan campaigns tied to insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan that resulted in enormous death tolls in past years, said William McCants, author of The ISIS Apocalypse at the Brookings Institution in Washington. A suicide bomber blew himself in a village in the Bekaa Valley.
The battle for Al-Bukamal has now continued for several days indicating both the strength of ISIS in the area to dominate civilians and the lack of capability by the New Syrian Army.
On Friday evening, the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, Bangladesh was a site of terror after gunmen attacked and took patrons hostage. There have been no claims of responsibility yet.
In Baghdad, residents hardened by years of war said the July 3 bombing was like no other, trapping shoppers in an inferno of fire that killed at least 175 people in one of the deadliest single attacks since the 2003 US -led invasion. They were injured in the explosion, but the attacker was the only one killed. “The vast majority of them, 222 people, died in the Baghdad blast, which targeted a shopping street packed with people celebrating the end of the day’s fast and shopping for the approaching holiday”.
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We should also understand that no self-respecting Muslim would commit acts of violence during Ramadan, the most sacred month in the Islamic calendar.
