A video released by an Islamic State-affiliated jihadist group threatened Washington, DC, with a Paris-like attack if it continued its military campaign in Syria.
Days after claiming responsibility for killing 129 people in Friday’s multiple attacks in Paris, the IS-linked terrorists vowed — in a new video posted to an IS website on Monday — the US would “suffer the same fate” as France.
“We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day, God willing, like France’s and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington,” Reuters quoted the video as warning.
The threat was delivered by a terrorist identified as “Al Ghareeb the Algerian,” a man clad in military fatigues and a turban. He also threatened the “crusader” nations participating in the US-led military coalition targeting Islamic State strongholds in Syria.
“I say to the European countries that we are coming, coming with booby traps and explosives, coming with explosive belts and [gun] silencers, and you will be unable to stop us because today we are much stronger than before,” he said.
The authenticity of the six-minute video was not immediately confirmed. It was apparently produced by Wilayat Kirkuk, a jihadist group based in northern Iraq.
In its first major military response to Friday’s attacks in Paris, France said 12 of its warplanes on Saturday hit IS positions in the city of Raqqa, the jihadists’ de facto capital in Syria.
On Monday, CIA director John Brennan warned that the attacks in Paris were likely not a “one-off event” and said he expects the Islamic State has more operations in the pipeline.
“Security and intelligence services right now are working feverishly to see what else they can do in terms of uncovering it,” he told a Washington think tank.
The CIA chief said Friday night’s attacks by gunmen in suicide vests in the heart of the French capital were carefully planned and executed.
“This was not something done in a matter of days. This is something that was carefully and deliberately planned over the course of several months in terms of whether they had the operatives, the weapons, explosives, suicide belts.
“I would anticipate that this is not the only operation ISIL has in the pipeline,” he said, using an alternate acronym for IS, the terror group that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq.
At least 129 people were killed in the Paris attacks carried out by at least eight gunmen almost simultaneously at a stadium, a concert hall and restaurants.
