The following are some of this week's reports from the MEMRI Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM) Project, which translates and analyzes content from sources monitored around the clock, among them the most important jihadi websites and blogs. (To view these reports in full, you must be a paying member of the JTTM; for membership information, send an email to jttmsubs@memri.org with "Membership" in the subject line.)
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The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
On January 19, 2024, a Hamas delegation, led by the organization's international relations chief Moussa Abu Marzouq, visited Moscow. This was Hamas's second visit to Russia since its October 7 attack on Israel. The delegation met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also Putin's special envoy to the Middle East.
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
On January 20, 2024, Lebanese Hizbullah's Al-Ahed website reported that the municipality of Maaroub, in the Tyre district, inaugurated a solar power system for the town's artesian well, which was funded by the leadership of Hizbullah; the Amal Movement; French, Finnish, and Malaysian United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) forces, and philanthropists.
On January 16, 2024, users in the Islamic State (ISIS)-operated server on Rocket Chat discussed a news report saying that Army National Guardsmen from New Jersey are preparing to deploy to Iraq and Syria.
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
In the aftermath of the Hamas October 7, 2023, attack against Israel, and Israel's response a day later, declaring war on Hamas and armed Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip. The country is backed by the U.S. administration's unconditional verbal and military support. Jihadi clerics based in the U.S. and Canada published their opinions on American Muslims' support for President Joseph Biden; the purpose of Hamas's attack, and whether it was worth carrying out in light of the vast devastation and humanitarian crises in the Gaza Strip.
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
The U.S. State Department designated Yemen's Iran-backed Ansar Allah Movement (the Houthis) once again as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, generating a wave of denunciations from Yemen's Houthis, as well as from militant groups affiliated with the Iran-backed, Iran-led "Axis of Resistance," which includes Lebanese Hizbullah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
On January 22, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Iraqi airline "Fly Baghdad," and its CEO, Basheer Abdulkadhim Alwan Al-Shabbani, for "providing assistance to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its proxy groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon."
On January 22, 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Iraqi airline "Fly Baghdad," and its CEO, for providing assistance to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its proxy groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
Hamas Warns Against Fake Telegram Accounts Collecting Bitcoin Donations On Its Behalf
On January 18, 2024, Hamas published a post on its official Telegram channel which includes a link to a closed Telegram channel that claims to be the only official channel of the group.
On January 22, 2024, a pro-Hamas Gaza-based Telegram channel published a post soliciting donations for the purchase of "food baskets, tents, clothes" and infant formula for Gazans.
On January 20, 2024, Yemen's Iran-backed Ansar Allah Movement (the Houthis) reported on its official website that that day, the group held a military maneuver in the Bani Matar district of Yemen's Sanaa governorate.
On January 24, 2024, Yemen's Iran-backed Ansar Allah Movement (the Houthis) issued a statement claiming its forces carried out attacks on American destroyers and warships in the Gulf of Aden and Bab Al-Mandab Strait.
On January 22, 2024, the Yemeni Houthi Ansar Allah movement published a claim of responsibility for an attack against a U.S. naval vessel in the Gulf of Aden. In the statement, Houthi armed forces spokesman Brig.-Gen. Yahya Saree' stated that the attack was carried out "in support of the oppressed Palestinian people and the framework of the response to the American-British aggression against our country." He further announced: "A retaliation to the American and British attacks is unavoidable, and no future attack will go unpunished."
On January 19, 2024, the official website of the Houthi Ansar Allah Movement released a series of anti-American posters depicting American symbols, such as the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam and American soldiers, as figures of death, destruction, and evil. The posters were issued a day after Houthi leader Abd Al-Malik Badr Al-Din Al-Houthi delivered a televised address, in which he threatened "direct confrontation" with the United States. Each poster also featured selected excerpts from the address.
In a seven-minute video posted on its Telegram channel on January 20, 2024, the recently-established group 'Al-Farouq Brigades – Sinai' claims responsibility for a series of "unprecedented attacks and operations in the depth of the occupying entity [Israel]."
On January 21, 2024, the spokesman of Iran-backed Hizbullah Brigades in Iraq, Abu Ali Al-Askari, also known as Hussein Mo'nis, published a statement on his Telegram channel in which he threatened to escalate the pace of attacks carried out by Iran-backed militias in Iraq against U.S. targets. The attacks will escalate in the coming days, according to the statement.
On January 19, 2024, Abu 'Ali, spokesman of the Al-Ashtar Jihadi Movement, which is part of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, issued a three-minute, 55-second video in which he appears masked, reading a statement. The Al-Ashtar spokesman threatens to attack U.S. interests in Iraq to support the Palestinian cause, and announces that the group has begun recruitment and is resuming the activities of its anti-vice detachment.
On January 18, 2024, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed joint operations group of Iraqi militias, published statements on Telegram claiming drone attacks against the U.S. Hemo base west of Qamishli Airport in northeastern Syria, and an additional U.S. base near Erbil International Airport in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region. The statements assert that the group will continue to "crush the enemy's strongholds."
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed joint operations group of Iraqi militias, claimed a series of attacks against U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq from January 21 to January 23, 2024. The latest attacks came as part of a campaign by the militias. Since mid-October 2023, there have been over 100 assaults on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, as well as on targets in southern and northern Israel.
On January 22, 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department applied terrorist designations to Iraqi airline Fly Baghdad and its CEO for assisting Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and its proxies, as well as to Husayn Mu'nis, head of the Huqouq Movement, the political party of Iraq's Iran-backed Hizbullah Brigades, and other individuals associated with the group.
On January 24, 2024, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a statement saying that, "In response to attacks by the Iranian-backed militia group Kataib Hezbollah (KH), including the attack on [Ayn] Al-Assad Airbase in western Iraq on January 20, on January 24 at 12:15 a.m. (Iraq time), U.S. CENTCOM forces conducted unilateral airstrikes against three facilities used by Iranian-backed KH militia group and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq. These strikes targeted KH headquarters, storage, and training locations for rocket, missile, and one-way attack UAV capabilities."
On January 24, 2024, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a statement reporting that in retaliation for attacks by the Iran-backed Iraqi Kata'ib Hizbullah (Hizbullah Brigades or KH) against U.S. bases, its forces conducted unilateral airstrikes against three facilities used by the Hizbullah Brigades and other "Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq." According to the statement, the strikes targeted the group's "headquarters, storage, and training locations for rocket, missile, and one-way attack UAV capabilities."
On January 25, 2024, a Telegram channel which is affiliated with Iran-backed militias in Iraq published a poster on its official Telegram channel calling on followers to provide information about U.S. forces in Iraq.
On January 21, 2024, a media outlet which opposes Iran-backed militias in Iraq shared a report by a news outlet detailing how the Iran-backed Iraqi Hizbullah Brigades militia is building its own "drug empire" in Iraq with the help of Lebanese Hizbullah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
On January 18, 2024, Telegram channels affiliated with the Syrian opposition said that Jordan conducted an airstrike in the Syrian regime-held city of Sweida in the southern part of the country near the Jordanian border.
The editorial in Issue 426 of Al-Naba', the official weekly magazine of the Islamic State (ISIS), published on January 18, 2024, is titled "Indeed, Before This They Were Spoiled by Luxury (Quran 56:45)." The editorial seeks to persuade young Muslims to devote their lives to jihad, arguing that enjoying luxuries and worldly pleasures is one of the greatest obstacles preventing them from waging jihad.
On January 12, 2024, an Islamic center in a suburb of Sydney, Australia which is affiliated with pro-Islamic State (ISIS) preacher Wisam (Abu Ousayd) Haddad, announced that its Saturday Shari'a School is open for enrollment for 2024.
A key article in the current issue of the "Voice of Khurasan," an English-language monthly magazine published by Al-Azaim Media Foundation, a media outlet linked to the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), which defines itself as a supporting entity for the Islamic State (ISIS), states that Bosnian Muslims are again facing a genocide-like situation at the hands of Serbs, with anti-Muslim sentiments also being fostered by Islamophobia by far-right leaders in European countries such as Hungary and Poland.
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
A major article written by Australian ISIS supporter Abu Khalid Al-Australi in the current issue of the Voice of Khurasan – the English-language magazine of the Islamic State's Khurasan Province (ISKP) – urges Muslim mothers to raise their children to wage jihad.
On January 17, 2024, a prolific pro-ISIS Telegram channel posted photos and commentary accusing the Afghan Taliban of enlisting China's help to control ISIS and its attacks on places of worship belonging to religious minorities in Afghanistan.
In a Pashtu-language video that the Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP) released after the January 3, 2024 bombings in Kerman, a masked terrorist, armed with a Kalashnikov, warns Iran of more terror attacks in the coming days.
On January 24, 2024, Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, Harakat Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen (Al-Shabab), launched attacks on several bases housing Somali special forces in the Ad area of the country's central Mudug province, claiming the death and injury of hundreds.
Al-Qaeda Affiliate GSIM Claims Attacks On Malian Military Airport, Islamic State Fighters In Burkina
On January 23, 2024, Al-Zallaqa, the media arm of Al-Qaeda's affiliate in the African Sahel, Jama'at Nusrat Al-Islam Wal-Muslimeen (the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims – GSIM) claimed two attacks in the past days. The first attack targeted a military airport of Timbuktu, Mali, while the second targeted fighters affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS).
Afghan news website Hasht-e-Subh recently published an article examining the reasons behind, and implications of, the arrests of dozens of members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir Afghanistan by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA, i.e., the Afghan Taliban).
On January 11, 2024, the Afghan branch of the global Islamist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir shared a Pashtu-language article on X (formerly Twitter) questioning America's non-military presence in Afghanistan after the withdrawal in August 2021.
This report presents a comparative analysis of terror attacks executed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from 2021 to 2023. While the TTP has been conducting terror attacks for a long time in Pakistan, the year 2021 was significant. In mid-August that year, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA, i.e., the Afghan Taliban) came to power after a two-decade jihad against the United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan. After August 2021, TTP attacks in Pakistan rose sharply.
inister For Refugee Affairs Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani, who is listed on the U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice Program.
