Video: The Gurmans fight the terrorist / Credit: Social media/X

Family members confirmed Boris Gurman, 69, and Sofia Gurman, 61, as the individuals after providing a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald. Relatives stated: "We are heartbroken by the sudden and senseless loss of our beloved Boris and Sofia Gurman," according to The Guardian.

They added: "They had been married for 34 years, with their 35th wedding anniversary approaching in January. We were looking forward to celebrating Sofia's 62nd birthday on Wednesday 17th of December," The Guardian reported.

Dashboard camera video uploaded to Rednote documented Boris – dressed in purple – tackling shooter Sajid Akram along Campbell Parade as the gunman exited a vehicle displaying an Islamic State banner, according to The Guardian.

These were Boris and Sofia Gurman - murdered in the Sydney massacre. In the face of terror, Boris showed extraordinary courage and disarmed one of the jihadists, trying to save others.

In life and in death, they were not separated pic.twitter.com/Fhbw2BoNsf

— נועה מגיד | Noa magid (@NoaMagid) December 16, 2025

The footage captures Boris forcing Akram down and wresting a firearm from his possession while Sofia participated in the struggle, The Guardian reported.

A Sydney resident whose camera inadvertently recorded the encounter shared the material with a Mandarin caption stating: "Such civilian heroes shouldn't be forgotten," according to The Guardian. Her post continued: "I'm truly heartbroken," The Guardian reported.

Later drone imagery shows the couple lying motionless side by side on the sidewalk. Family members characterized Boris as "a retired mechanic, known for his generosity, quiet strength and willingness to lend a hand to anyone in need. Sofia worked at Australia Post and was deeply loved by her colleagues and community," The Guardian reported.

The statement continued: "Bondi locals, together they lived honest, hardworking lives and treated everyone they met with kindness, warmth and respect. Boris and Sofia were devoted to their family and to each other. They were the heart of our family, and their absence has left an immeasurable void," according to The Guardian.

Relatives additionally praised the couple's valor when facing the attacker, The Guardian reported. "In recent days, we have become aware of footage showing Boris, with Sofia by his side, courageously attempting to disarm an attacker in an effort to protect others," family members stated. They added: "While nothing can lessen the pain of losing Boris and Sofia, we feel an overwhelming sense of pride in their bravery and selflessness. This encapsulates who Boris and Sofia were – people who instinctively and selflessly tried to help others," The Guardian reported.

The statement concluded: "We are deeply grateful for the love, compassion and support that has been shown to our family during this unimaginable time. From here, we kindly ask for privacy as we grieve," according to The Guardian.

The Gurmans number among 15 fatalities from the Bondi beach terror attack. Most casualties were participating in Hanukkah's opening day when gunfire began, representing Australia's deadliest mass shooting since 1996's Port Arthur tragedy, according to The Guardian.

Thirty-eight additional people sustained injuries, with 24 – including two officers – remaining hospitalized Tuesday afternoon, The Guardian reported.

Six Australia Post coworkers visited Bondi Pavilion Tuesday afternoon honoring Sofia, with one colleague declining identification while confirming years working together, according to The Guardian. All arrived uniformed, placing individual white roses and a card, The Guardian reported. One coworker stated: "It's very tragic and seeing this video made us realise just how brave she and her husband was," according to The Guardian.

Multiple bystanders have received widespread recognition for confronting danger attempting to halt the attackers. Among them is Ahmed al-Ahmed, acknowledged by prime minister Anthony Albanese and US president Donald Trump for charging toward Akram, jumping onto him and seizing the weapon, according to The Guardian.

Ahmed remains critically injured but stable at St George hospital after sustaining four to five shoulder gunshot wounds during the encounter, his parents confirmed to The Guardian. Reuven Morrison's daughter identified her father as the individual observed throwing an object in widely distributed footage, The Guardian reported.

Sheina Gutnick told CBS News Tuesday: "If there was one way for him to go on this earth, it would be fighting a terrorist. There was no other way he would be taken from us. He went down fighting, protecting the people he loved most," according to The Guardian. Authorities fatally shot Sajid Akram, while his son Naveed remains hospitalized under surveillance, The Guardian reported.

The post Dashcam footage reveals couple's heroic fight with Bondi shooter appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The disclosure follows ABC's documentation of extensive connections between 24-year-old Naveed Akram and Australia's pro-Islamic State network, including associations with extremist cleric Wisam Haddad and imprisoned youth recruiter Youssef Uweinat, according to ABC.

Legal counsel for Haddad stated he "vehemently denies any knowledge of or involvement in the shootings that took place at Bondi Beach," ABC reported. Authorities are examining the Akrams' links to international jihadist networks after establishing their early November arrival in Manila, case-briefed officials disclosed to ABC.

The duo subsequently journeyed to the southern Philippines for terrorist training, a senior counter-terrorism official confirmed anonymously to ABC. Late November marked their return to Australia – mere weeks before Sunday's beachfront slaughter, officials told ABC.

Since the early 1990s, the Philippines has functioned as a terrorist hub, hosting training facilities relocated from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to southern Mindanao, ABC reported. Security sources have withheld specific location and movement details regarding the pair's time in the southern Philippines, according to ABC.

ASIO, the nation's intelligence service, investigated Naveed Akram in 2019 over his Sydney-based IS terrorist cell associations, ABC revealed Monday.

Ahmed, you are an Australian hero.

You put yourself at risk to save others, running towards danger on Bondi Beach and disarming a terrorist.

In the worst of times, we see the best of Australians. And that's exactly what we saw on Sunday night.

On behalf of every Australian, I… pic.twitter.com/mAoObU3TZD

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) December 16, 2025

The then-18-year-old displayed "indications of intent" and concerning connections prompting ASIO's 2019 investigation, though additional scrutiny was deemed unwarranted then, a senior security source told ABC. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese informed the 7.30 program Monday evening that ASIO's six-month probe uncovered "no evidence" of radicalization in either father or son, ABC reported.

Neither man appeared on terrorism watchlists before the assault, and licensed gun owner Sajid Akram encountered no legal barriers to firearm possession, according to ABC.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, questioned on Radio National today about whether the Philippines travel alerted national security agencies, provided no direct answer, ABC reported. Burke observed that following ASIO's 2019 inquiry, "there was a radical change in the risk profile of that individual," according to ABC.

Two Islamic State flags discovered in the Akrams' Bondi Beach vehicle led investigators to conclude the pair had pledged allegiance to the terrorist group, ABC disclosed Monday.

The post Father-son terrorists underwent overseas training before Bondi Beach massacre appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Site managers of the Al-Nuri mosque in Mosul, Iraq, announced this week that they uncovered a historic find underneath the structure – a prayer room that dates back to the 12th century CE.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The mosque is nicknamed "the hunchback" by locals due to its iconic tilted minaret, according to the World Monuments Fund, and the building is famously depicted on Iraq's 10,000-dinar banknote.

Al-Nuri is situated in the former Islamic State's "caliphate," and the mosque suffered a large amount of damage during past battles, which prompted an initiative to restore the structure. During the renovation work, excavators exposed the prayer room, along with four other spaces designated for ritual ablutions.

The director of the Iraqi government's Department of Antiquities and Heritage, Khaireddine Nasser, said the find not only granted experts "better knowledge of the surface of Al-Nuri mosque and this ancient prayer room, but also the ablution basins," AFP reported.

Nasser added that this discovery "amplifies the importance of this historical and archeological site."

The four ablution rooms, standing nearly 10 feet tall and just over 11 feet wide, were discovered almost 20 feet below the ground.

The mosque's restoration, set to conclude by the end of 2023, is being funded through a UNESCO initiative which aims to "revive the spirit of Mosul."

UNESCO received $100 million in funding during 2019 for the project, with about half of this sum contributed by the United Arab Emirates.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post 900-year-old surprise exposed below Iraq's Al-Nuri Mosque appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The Islamic State (ISIS) terror organization conducted 2,705 attacks worldwide in 2021, roughly the same number it conducted in 2020 (2,781), according to a new report by an Israeli research center.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The Meir Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Information Center said that the role of ISIS in Afghanistan increased substantially in 2021 following America's withdrawal last August.

The report noted that "this year too, no prominent attacks inspired by ISIS occurred in the West," noting that the absence of major attacks has been taking place for a number of years.

Preventative actions exacted prices from ISIS in almost every one of its areas of activity, "particularly in the Sinai Peninsula," noted the report.

It also noted a minor drop in the number of attacks in the past year, describing the overall number as still high.

In 2021, 8,147 people were killed and wounded in ISIS attacks around the world, compared to 9,068 in 2020.

The highest number of incidents occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq and West Africa.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Islamic State carries out over 2,700 terrorist attacks in 2021 appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"Last month, the family of Mawlavi Ezzatullah, a member of Afghanistan's Hizb-e Islami party, received a WhatsApp message from his phone that read: "We have slaughtered your Mawlavi Ezzat, come and collect his body."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Ezzatullah's killing, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, was one of a steady stream of assassinations and bombings that have undermined Taliban claims that they have brought greater security to Afghanistan after 40 years of war.

Victims have ranged from former security officials from the ousted government to journalists, civil society activists, mullahs, Taliban fighters, and apparently random targets like Ezzatullah, whose family said he had no enemies they knew of.

The Taliban have said their victory has brought stability to Afghanistan, where thousands of people were killed in fighting between the group and Western-backed forces between 2001 and 2021 before the hardline Islamists emerged victorious.

But on just one day last week, pictures from Jalalabad - the provincial capital of Nangarhar - appeared online showing two bodies swinging from a rope. Residents also reported a mullah's murder and video footage was circulated of a group of gunmen firing into a car, apparently killing its occupants, one of whom was identified by local journalists as a Taliban official.

On Sunday, according to locals, three bodies were brought into a hospital in Jalalabad following a roadside bomb explosion that apparently targeted Taliban fighters in a pickup truck.

Later that day, gunmen shot a former Afghan army soldier in front of his house, killing him and two friends standing nearby.

The Taliban have downplayed such incidents, saying that after decades of war, it will take time for the country to be completely pacified.

"There are 34 provinces in the country and in a week, 20 cases will be prevented for every one that takes place," said spokesman Bilal Karimi. "We have had 20 years of revolution and invasion, and the level of these incidents will go down."

Some former soldiers and intelligence officers from the ousted government blame members of the Taliban for targeting them since taking over. The group has promised there would be no reprisals but accepts rogue fighters may have acted alone.

Many targeted killings remain unclaimed, and some may be the result of local vendettas.

Others, however, appear to be the result of increasingly open conflict between the Taliban and a local affiliate of Islamic State, a development which the new US Special Representative for Afghanistan, Tom West, said on Monday was causing concern.

The militant jihadi group has claimed some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan in recent months in which hundreds of people have been killed, mainly in big cities.

"They are trying to undermine and discredit the Taliban Emirate. The Emirate promised security, and they're trying to show they can't deliver it," said Antonio Giustozzi, a specialist in jihadi groups from the Royal United Services Institute in London.

He said Islamic State, which he estimated to have around 4,000 fighters, had been carrying out a campaign of targeted killings since around the summer of 2020 and had continued since the Taliban victory in August on a "roughly comparable scale."

'Biden hirelings'

For many going about their business, the violence feels particularly menacing.

"I have never been as terrified as I am now," said a university professor in Nangarhar who has also worked as a journalist and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted. He described events in Nangarhar as "total chaos."

The violence has fueled fears that Afghanistan could collapse into anarchy and even return to a new phase of civil war, creating a haven for militant groups to launch attacks in neighboring countries and the West.

"This is the scenario that has everyone worried," said one Western official with long experience of the region.

Islamic State, which first appeared in Afghanistan in late 2014 and adopted the title Islamic State Khorasan after an ancient name for the region, has been trying to recover from a bruising series of defeats in 2018 and 2019.

The group has claimed a series of strikes against Shi'ite mosques and other targets since the Taliban's victory in August, most recently on the main military hospital in Kabul which killed at least 25 people.

Less commonly reported are frequent, smaller atrocities that have been taking place not only in Nangarhar, long a stronghold of Islamic State.

Areas affected include Ghazni in central Afghanistan, Herat in the west, Balkh in the north, and Paktia, Paktika, and Khost in the southeast.

"The Taliban militia are lost in panic, they do not know how to conceal their shame," an Islamic State video posted on the group's Telegram channel on Sunday said, accusing the Taliban of being "Biden hirelings."

As an insurgency, the Taliban proved an effective and cohesive fighting force. Keeping the peace in a country in crisis presents fresh challenges, including uniting different factions, values, and norms within the movement.

Giustozzi, who wrote a book on Islamic State in Afghanistan, said the group, which had retreated into remote strongholds in the east and northeast of the country, was trying to hit the Taliban while the group is still grappling with the transition from insurgency to government.

"They know that if they allow the Taliban Emirate to consolidate, next spring the Taliban will move to destroy them," he said.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Targeted killings put Taliban's claims of safer Afghanistan in question appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Russian Ambassador to Syria Alexander Yefimov harshly criticized Thursday the recent string of Israeli airstrikes in Syria, saying they undermine joint Kremlin-Damascus efforts to stabilize the country and even pose a threat to civilian air traffic.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The claims made by Yefimov, who was speaking with Russian news agency TASS, seem to contradict previous Israeli statements regarding ongoing security coordination and cooperation between Moscow and Jerusalem in the Syrian arena. As a reminder, following Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi last month, it was reported that the sides agreed that Israel could continue acting freely in Syria.

"Another alarming moment is the recurrent missile strikes by Israel. They often target even the suburbs of Damascus, and there have been cases when explosions happened directly in the capital's residential districts. Israeli raids also pose a direct threat to civilian air traffic in the sky over Syria," Yefimov said.

Yefimov noted that any talk about normalizing the situation in Syria would only be possible after the Bashar Assad regime can conduct full-fledged anti-terrorist activities throughout the country's, without interference and obstacles from unfriendly external forces.

The Russian ambassador said that after the last terrorist strongholds were eliminated in the suburbs of Damascus in the summer of 2018, many aspects of life in the city had improved, but that it was too early to talk about completely returning to a peaceful life.

"I have already explained, the terrorist threat has not disappeared, both for the country in general and specifically for Damascus. Let me remind you again about the major terrorist attack in the capital about two weeks ago," Efimov added.

When asked how he would gauge the current level of terrorist threat in Syria and the chances of armed insurgents flowing into the country, Yefimov said, "Unfortunately, it is really premature to say that terrorism in Syria has been completely defeated now. This problem is also not limited to the terrorist stronghold in Idlib. The source of the terrorist threat continues to be the Islamic State [group]."

He added: "Despite the fact that by the joint efforts of the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian army, the organized military potential of Islamic State was eliminated, its individual elements continue raids from the desert territories outside of Damascus' control in the east of the country."

According to Efimov, the Syrian authorities generally manage to maintain an adequate level of security in Damascus, but from time to time terrorists become noticeable. He recalled a deadly terrorist attack in the center of Damascus in late October.

"In other words, the terrorist threat remains real in Syria and it is too early to get complacent. To its credit, Syria does everything possible to prevent and combat terrorism. However, the Syrian government will be able to act more efficiently only by restoring its control over its entire national territory," he added.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Russian ambassador to Syria: Israeli airstrikes undermine stability appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

It appears that the explosion on a Syrian bus near the Haffez Assad Bridge in Damascus Wednesday morning, that let 14 people dead, is another terrorist act perpetrated by the Islamic State or some other Islamist, jihadist group, the Syrian military said in an announcement released on the SANA news agency.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The attack was an attempt to hurt the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and prevent him from rebuilding the country and its military, which have been debilitated by the country's 10-year war.

However, the deaths of the bus passengers is sparking questions about whether the blast was a routine terrorist act targeting Syrian soldiers, or was an attempt to take out Iranian officials or pro-Iranian Syrian officials who are operating under coverage of the Syrian regime's defense establishment.

None of the official announcements stated that the passengers on the bus were Syrian soldiers, although reports of the attack from Lebanon and Syrian media outlets stated that they were Iranian officers.

As of Wednesday afternoon, no jihadist or rebel organization in Syria, particularly ISIS, had claimed responsibility for the bombing, which is atypical of ISIS and the other Islamist groups active in Syria. These organizations tend to boast about the attacks they carry out, especially when they target the "defense forces of the infidel regime."

The characteristics of the bus bombing and the way in which it was perpetrated also appear to hint that it wasn't the work of a terrorist organization. From various Syrian and foreign reports, one could get the impression that the target of the attack and the location at which the bombs were detonated were carefully chosen to avoid collateral damage. In fact, the blast occurred after the bus was across the Haffez Assad Bride and well away from the bustling streets of Damascus. Neither ISIS nor other terrorist groups would have hesitated to set off the bombs in a crowded area, as they would have wanted to harm as many civilians as possible.

The Syrian army announced that the bus had been blown up by two powerful roadside bombs that demolished the vehicle and left its occupants no chance of surviving. A third bomb found at the site was dismantled by Syrian army sappers. We can assume that the bombs that did go off were strong enough to kill everyone on board, and the third bomb was meant to be used as backup. But this isn't how ISIS and the other jihadist organizations in the Middle East and Syria in particular – who prefer casualty numbers over "quality" terrorist target – operate.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Damascus bus bombing doesn't feel like the work of terrorists appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

With the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, there's a new enemy ascending.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The Islamic State group threatens to usher in another violent phase. Except this time the former insurgents, the Taliban, play the role of the state, now that the US troops and their allied Afghan government are gone.

The Taliban promised the United States to keep the extremist group in check during successive rounds of peace talks. Under the 2020 US-Taliban accord, the Taliban guaranteed that Afghanistan would not become a haven for terrorist groups threatening the US or its allies.

But it is unclear if they can keep their pledge, with a sudden uptick in ISIS attacks since the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15.

A deadly bombing Friday in the northern province of Kunduz killed 46 worshippers inside a mosque frequented by Shiites. Other deadly IS attacks have struck in the capital, Kabul, and provinces to the east and north, while smaller-scale attacks target Taliban fighters almost daily.

"Historically, the majority of IS attacks have targeted the state ... Now that the US and the international presence is mostly gone, they need to go after the state – and the state is the Taliban," said Andrew Mines, research fellow at Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Long rivalry

Both the Taliban and ISIS advocate rule by their radical interpretations of Islamic law. But there are key ideological differences that fuel their hatred of each other.

The Taliban say they are creating an Islamic state in Afghanistan, within the borders of that country.

ISIS says it is THE Islamic State, a global caliphate that it insists all Muslims must support. It is contemptuous of the Taliban's nationalist goals and doesn't recognize them as a pure Islamic movement. For similar reasons, ISIS has long been a staunch enemy of al-Qaida.

Both the Taliban and ISIS advocate particularly harsh versions of Islamic Shariah law and have used tactics like suicide bombers. But when it ruled territory in Syria and Iraq, ISIS was even more brutal and carried out more horrific punishments than the Taliban did.

ISIS emerged in Afghanistan in 2015 with the name Islamic State in Khorasan Province, at a time when the group was at its peak, controlling much of Iraq and Syria. It drew members from Afghan and Pakistani militants, including a wave of Taliban defectors.

The group initially found support among Afghanistan's small Salafist movement in eastern Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. The Salafis had largely been marginalized by the Taliban, and by connecting with the rising ISIS, the Salafist movement found a means to establish military strength.

But ISIS's brutal ways have since led some Salafi clerics to voice opposition. In the years after its emergence, ISIS was badly hurt by military setbacks at the hands of the Taliban and by US airstrikes, before surging again the past year.

The Taliban downplay ISIS' capabilities and dismiss them as a fringe group with no mainstream appeal.

"They have no roots here," influential Taliban figure Sheikh Abdul-Hameed Hamasi told The Associated Press.

End game

Still, the potency of the ISIS threat is undeniable.

Two deadly bombings have hit Kabul, including one outside the airport at the height of evacuations before the US exit that killed 169 Afghans and 13 US service members. Smaller scale attacks are also on the rise.

"The intensity and breadth of attacks … show the capacity and level of national reach which has caught the Taliban by surprise," said Ibraheem Bahiss, a consultant with the International Crisis Group. ISIS "is no short-term threat."

It could be a while until IS has the capability to hold territory again. Its immediate aim is to destabilize the Taliban and shatter the group's image as a guardian of security.

For now, its strategy is slow and methodical. It is reaching out to tribes and other groups to recruit from their ranks while stamping out dissent among moderate Salafis and carrying out jailbreaks, assassinations, and attacks on Taliban personnel.

"Package all of that together, that is an entire method of insurgency the Taliban is not equipped to handle," said Mines.

Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank, offered a different view, saying he believes the Taliban can uproot IS on their own, even without the backup of US airstrikes that nearly eliminated ISIS.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

Roggio said the Taliban have shown themselves capable of rooting out some ISIS cells, using their vast local intelligence-gathering networks. He noted that ISIS – unlike the Taliban during their insurgency – doesn't have access to safe havens in Pakistan and Iran.

The Taliban have rejected cooperating with the US against ISIS, ahead of the two sides' direct talks last weekend.

ISIS' future trajectory in Afghanistan will depend largely on its ability to recruit more members and win over large segments of the population.

Since their inception, they have been poaching Taliban members. In 2015, a former Taliban commander, Abdul Rauf Khadim, was appointed deputy of ISIS in Afghanistan and reportedly offered financial incentives to other Taliban fighters to join the group.

In 2020, when ISIS re-emerged in Afghanistan, it was under a new leader drawn from the Haqqani Network, currently a faction of the Taliban.

Hard-line members of the Taliban could join ISIS as the Taliban leadership, now in power, has to make compromises whether at home or abroad. The Taliban have promised a more inclusive government, though the temporary administration they set up is entirely made up of Taliban members.

The more the Taliban cooperate with international states, the more they run against the image of the mujahedeen resistance fighter. "That is a key identity the Taliban will lose," Mines said.

Treatment of minorities

As the Taliban shift from insurgency to governance, one key test will be whether they act to protect minority groups that their fighters once tyrannized, such as the Shiite Hazaras.

The Hazaras have endured multiple campaigns of persecution and displacement throughout Afghanistan's history. When the Taliban were first in power in the 1990s, they carried out massacres against the community, in some cases in retaliation for massacres of ethnic Pashtuns.

ISIS has targeted Hazaras because most are Shiite Muslims, killing hundreds in brutal attacks targeting their places of worship in what it calls a war on heretics.

Friday's mosque attack in Kunduz was an opportunity for the Taliban to project a new image as a state power. The Taliban acted swiftly: Special forces swept the scene, investigations were launched, the provincial police chief made lofty promises to protect minority "brothers."

The post Can the Taliban quash ISIS? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

A little more than a month after toppling the Western-backed government in Kabul, Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers are facing internal enemies who have adopted many of the tactics of urban warfare that marked their own successful guerrilla campaign.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

A deadly attack on Kabul airport last month and a series of bomb blasts in the eastern city of Jalalabad, all claimed by the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, have underlined the threat to stability from violent militant groups who remain unreconciled to the Taliban.

While the movement's spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has downplayed the threat, saying this week that Islamic State had no effective presence in Afghanistan, commanders on the ground do not dismiss the threat so lightly.

Two members of the movement's intelligence services who investigated some of the recent attacks in Jalalabad said the tactics showed the group remained a danger, even if it did not have enough fighters and resources to seize territory.

Using sticky bombs – magnetic bombs usually stuck to the underside of cars – the attacks targeted Taliban members in exactly the same way the Taliban itself used to hit officials and civil society figures to destabilize the former government.

As a result of both abandonment and poor tracking, the Islamic State group, the Taliban and other militant groups managed to acquire American-supplied anti-armor weapons, tanks, drones and massive numbers of small arms, like rifles, and light weapons, such as machine guns and basic rockets.

"We are worried about these sticky bombs that once we used to apply to target our enemies in Kabul. We are concerned about our leadership as they could target them if not controlled successfully," said one of the Taliban intelligence officials.

Islamic State in Khorasan, the name taken from the ancient name for the region that includes modern Afghanistan, first emerged in late 2014 but has declined from its peak around 2018 following a series of heavy losses inflicted by both the Taliban and US forces.

Taliban security forces in Nangarhar said they had killed three members of the movement on Wednesday night and the intelligence officials said the movement still retains the ability to cause trouble through small-scale attacks.

"Their main structure is broken and they are now divided into small groups to carry out attacks," one of them said.

The Taliban have said repeatedly that they will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a base for attacks on other countries. But some Western analysts believe the return of the Islamist group to power has invigorated groups like ISIS-K and al-Qaida, which had made Afghanistan their base when the Taliban last ruled the country.

"In Afghanistan, the return of Taliban is a huge victory for the Islamists," said Rohan Gunaratna, professor of security studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "They have celebrated the return of the Taliban, so I think that Afghanistan is the new theater."

ISIS-K is believed to draw many of its fighters from the ranks of the Taliban or the Pakistani version of the Taliban, known as the TTP, but much of the way it operates remains understood.

It has fought the Taliban over smuggling routes and other economic interests but it also supports a global Caliphate under Islamic law, in contrast with the Taliban which insists it has no interest anywhere outside Afghanistan.

Most analysts, as well as the United Nations, peg ISIS-K's strength at less than 2,000 fighters, compared to as many as 100,000 at the Taliban's disposal. The ranks of ISIS-K were swollen with prisoners released when Afghanistan's jails were opened by the Taliban as they swept through the country.

According to a June report by the UN Security Council, ISIS-K's financial and logistic ties to its parent organization in Syria have weakened, though it does retain some channels of communication.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

"Funding support to the Khorasan branch from the core is believed to have effectively dried up," the report said.

However, the report said signs of divisions within the Taliban, which have already started to emerge, could encourage more fighters to defect as the wartime insurgency tries to reshape itself into a peacetime administration.

"It remains active and dangerous, particularly if it is able, by positioning itself as the sole pure rejectionist group in Afghanistan, to recruit disaffected Taliban and other militants to swell its ranks," the UN said.

The post Islamic State uses Taliban's own tactics to attack Afghanistan's new rulers appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers said on Tuesday there was no evidence of Islamic State or al-Qaida terrorists being in the country, days after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for bomb attacks in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Since toppling the Western-backed government in Kabul last month, the Taliban have faced pressure from the international community to renounce ties with al-Qaida, the group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

At the same time, they have had to deal with a series of attacks claimed by an affiliate of the Islamic State, with which they have been in conflict for several years over a mix of economic and ideological disputes.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected accusations that al-Qaida maintained a presence in Afghanistan and repeated pledges that there would be no attacks on third countries from Afghanistan from militant movements.

"We do not see anyone in Afghanistan who has anything to do with al-Qaida," he told a news conference in Kabul. "We are committed to the fact that, from Afghanistan, there will not be any danger to any country."

The Taliban were ousted from power by US-led forces in 2001 for refusing to hand over al Qaeda leaders responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They returned to Kabul last month after US forces announced they were leaving and the US-backed government and military collapsed.

The Afghan affiliate of Islamic State, known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), after an old name for the region, first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in 2014 and later made inroads into other areas, particularly the north.

Several years ago, the US military put the group's strength at about 2,000 fighters, though some Afghan officials at the time estimated the number was higher.

It battled US-led foreign forces and the Taliban, for control of smuggling routes while also apparently seeking to build a global Caliphate.

The group claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan at the weekend read more. It also claimed a suicide bomb attack at Kabul airport last month that killed 13 US troops and scores of Afghan civilians who had crowded outside the airport gates.

Mujahid denied the movement had any genuine presence in Afghanistan though he said it "invisibly carries out some cowardly attacks."

"The ISIS that exists in Iraq and Syria does not exist here. Still, some people who may be our own Afghans have adopted the ISIS mentality, which is a phenomenon that the people do not support," he said.

"The security forces of the Islamic Emirate are ready and will stop them," he said.

Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!

The post Taliban say no al-Qaida or ISIS in Afghanistan appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.