New ISIS recruits ready to launch fresh wave of attacks on the West
These are the latest batch of killers being trained by the terror group which radicalised Seifeddine Rezgui, the Tunisian terrorist who gunned down 30 British holidaymakers in cold blood.
The propaganda images released by the ISIS linked Ansar al-Sharia group show masked recruits wielding automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades at an unknown location in Libya.
They also scaled a bullet ridden cement wall, took part in shooting practice and patrolled the Libyan desert as part of their terror camp ‘graduation’ ceremony.
Other images, released in the last 48 hours, showed soldiers in green camouflage taking part in shooting practise and carrying out foot patrols over a desert area of Libya.
Ansar al-Sharia’s main strongholds are in the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Sirte. It is formally aligned with ISIS and its Tunisian wing is held responsible for radicalising Rezgui while he was a student studying aviation engineering.
Rezgui is believed to have twice attended an Ansar al-Sharia training camp in Libya before her returned home to slaughter 38 holidaymakers, including 30 Britons, in the Tunisian resort town of Sousse in May.
Before he embarked on a killing spree, Rezgui is thought to have made a ten second mobile phone to his ISIS ‘handler’ in Syria.
In January, he trained with the jihadists who later returned to Tunisia to carry out the Bardo Museum attacks in Tunis which killed 22.
ISIS is now thought to be advising foreign fighters to travel to Libya instead of Syria, where the terror group is being targeted by both Russian and United States-led airstrikes, and a major ground offensive by Syrian soldiers.
Increased security along the Turkey-Syria border has made it much more difficult for extremists to cross into the war torn country from Europe.
Seeking ‘jihad’ in Libya, which is separated from Europe only by the Mediterranean Sea, is now being touted as a less risky option to those seeking to join ISIS’s barbaric cause.
There are also fears that British fanatics are currently being trained by Ansar al-Sharia in Libya.
At least one suspected British jihadist based in Sirte, the hometown of the deceased dictator Muammar Gaddafi, is said to be advising incoming jihadists by sending them encrypted messages using a smartphone app.
Ansar al-Sharia’s latest propaganda images were released two days after a US airstrike on ISIS’s de-facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, killed six suspected extremists.
One of the ISIS fighters to be killed in the bombing is said to be Ansar al-Sharia commander Kamal Zarrouk, who may have been the man who gave Rezgui the go ahead for the attack in Sousse.
Zarrouk, once the deputy leader Ansar Al-Sharia in Tunisia and blamed by the authorities for being a major radicalising force on young people, has given speeches aimed at convincing youths to wage jihad in Libya and Syria.
More than 7,000 Tunisians have joined ISIS in Libya and Syria, according to the United Nations.
Around 80 per cent of them were recruited online, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Zarrouk had repeatedly evaded the police and security forces and after a failed raid in September 2013, he left Tunisia for Libya and then emerged in Syria in early 2014.
He called for the establishment of an Islamic state in Tunisia and warned of forthcoming terror strikes there.
A suspected Tunisian extremist, whose social media accounts are regularly suspended, claimed that Zarrouk had participated in fighting in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and other battles.
He wrote online on October 20: ‘Sheikh Kamal Zarrouk was Assassinated few Days ago with a Drone Strike near Tabqah…
‘May Allah Accept our Sheikh Kamal Zarrouk and grant him Jannah…the Mosques&Da’wah Stands of #Tunisia will miss him…’
Source: Daily Mail
