2024-03-25 19:31:00
The Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for Friday’s deadly attack at a Moscow concert hall and released graphic images showing its gunmen carrying out the worst terrorist attack in Russia in decades.
Russian authorities accused four men from the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan of being responsible for the attack, which left at least 137 people dead and more than 100 injured. The suspects, accused of committing a terrorist act and facing a possible life sentence, will remain in pretrial detention until May 22 after appearing before a Moscow court on Sunday.
U.S. authorities linked the attack to the Islamic State of Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an ISIS affiliate that operates in Central Asia and has become one of the most brutal and feared terrorist groups in the region.
Since November, the US received a stream of intelligence that ISIS-K was determined to mount an attack in Russia, sources told CNN, and relayed those warnings to Moscow. US Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday that “what we know is that ISIS-K is really, clearly, responsible for what happened.”
What is ISIS-K?
ISIS-K was formed in 2015 and has been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. It is a branch of ISIS, the terrorist group that emerged in Syria and Iraq and that, at its peak, controlled a huge expanse of territory.
Five years after the fall of ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria, the group has transformed into a terrorist network with cells spread across the world, including Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
The connection between ISIS-K and its apparent parent group is not entirely clear. The affiliates share an ideology and tactics, but the depth of their relationship – like the chain of command and control – has never been fully established.
In 2018, ISIS-K was ranked the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, which monitors global terrorism.
The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 and the withdrawal of US troops from the country placed ISIS-K in the global spotlight, especially after the group orchestrated a deadly attack outside Afghanistan airport. Kabul in which 13 American soldiers and 170 Afghans died.
It was the action with the greatest global impact by ISIS-K to that date and sparked a promise of revenge from the president of the United States, Joe Biden.
The United Nations estimated in 2021 that the group has up to 2,200 fighters based in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar.
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