WASHINGTON: The US Treasury Department has added two individuals and seven organizations in Africa and Asia connected to Daesh to its sanctions list for global terrorism, it said on Tuesday.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on its website it had added Abu Musab Al-Barnawi of Nigeria and Mahad Moalim of Somalia, and seven groups from Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines, Somalia, Nigeria and Tunisia to its sanctions list.
The additions include Daesh-Bangladesh, Daesh-Egypt, Daesh-Philippines, Daesh-Somalia, Daesh-West Africa, Jund Al-Khilafah-Tunisia, also known as Daesh-Tunisia, and the Philippines-based Maute Group, also known as Daesh of Lanao, OFAC said. The US State Department said in a separate statement that including the latest additions, it had designated 40 Daesh leaders and operatives dating back to 2011 under an order aimed at denying them access to the US financial system.
“These designations are part of a larger comprehensive plan to defeat Daesh that, in coordination with the 75-member Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh, has made significant progress toward that goal,” the statement said.
This effort “is destroying Daesh in its safe havens, denying its ability to recruit foreign terrorist fighters, stifling its financial resources, negating the false propaganda it disseminates over the Internet and social media, and helping to stabilize liberated areas in Iraq and Syria so the displaced can return to their homes and begin to rebuild their lives,” the statement added.
Daesh fighters were driven last year from all the population centers they occupied in both Syria and Iraq, but Washington still considers them a threat, capable of carrying out an insurgency and plotting attacks elsewhere.
US Treasury slaps sanctions on more Daesh targets
US Treasury slaps sanctions on more Daesh targets
Spain expects tourist arrivals to keep growing in 2026
- “If growth continues this year, we will reach 100 million foreign tourists,” Hereu said
- Spain is the world’s second most visited country after France
MADRID: Spain expects to host more foreign visitors, and for them to spend more in total, in 2026 after the country welcomed a record 97 million tourists last year, Tourism Minister Jordi Hereu told reporters on Thursday.
“If growth continues this year, we will reach 100 million foreign tourists, but we aren’t focused on that,” Hereu said, adding that last year’s figure represented a 3.5 percent increase on 2024, while revenues from tourism rose 6.8 percent to 135 billion euros ($157 billion).
Spain is the world’s second most visited country after France, and tourism is a major source of revenue for the economy, which has by far outgrown its European peers in the past two years.
According to tourism industry lobby Exceltur, the sector accounted for an estimated 13 percent of Spain’s gross domestic product in 2025.
Hereu said in the first four months of this year — including the busy Easter holiday season — authorities were forecasting a 3.7 percent rise in visitors from abroad to 26 million people, who they expect will spend 35 billion euros, up 2.5 percent from the same period last year. The Mediterranean country’s tourism boom, while boosting its economy, has led to tension in many visitor hotspots due to the indirect effect on housing prices, congestion and natural resource degradation problems. Some popular destinations like Ibiza have cracked down on short-term rentals.
Hereu said Spain’s model was moving away from seasonality, as data showed that tourist spending had grown by 53 percent in the low and mid-seasons compared with pre-pandemic year 2019, and by 34 percent in the high season. Two-thirds of tourists who visited Spain in 2025 intend to return as they see it as a safe place, the minister said, adding that there was no sign of global geopolitical issues affecting flight availability or booking trends.
