NEW DELHI: Daesh claimed for the first time that it has established a “province” in India, after a clash between militants and security forces in the contested Kashmir region killed a militant with alleged ties to the group.
Daesh's Amaq News Agency late on Friday announced the new province, that it called “Wilayah of Hind,” in a statement that also claimed IS inflicted casualties on Indian army soldiers in the town of Amshipora in the Shopian district of Kashmir.
The Daesh statement corresponds with an Indian police statement on Friday that a militant called Ishfaq Ahmad Sofi was killed in an encounter in Shopian.
Daesh’s statement establishing the new province appears to be designed to bolster its standing after the group was driven from its self-styled “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in April, where at one point it controlled thousands of miles of territory.
Daesh has stepped up hit-and-run raids and suicide attacks, including taking responsibility for the Easter Sunday bombing in Sri Lanka that killed at least 253 people.
“The establishment of a ‘province’ in a region where it has nothing resembling actual governance is absurd, but it should not be written off,” said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intel Group that tracks Islamic extremists.
“The world may roll its eyes at these developments, but to militants in these vulnerable regions, these are significant gestures to help lay the groundwork in rebuilding the map of the Daesh ‘caliphate’.”
Sofi had been involved in several militant groups in Kashmir for more than a decade before pledging allegiance to Daesh, according to a military official on Saturday and an interview given by Sofi to a Srinagar-based magazine sympathetic to Daesh.
He was suspected of several grenade attacks on security forces in the region, police and military sources said.
“It was a clean operation and no collateral damage took place during the exchange of fire,” a police spokesman said in the statement on Friday’s encounter.
The military official said it was possible that Sofi had been the only militant left in Kashmir associated with Daesh.
Separatists have for decades fought an armed conflict against Indian rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir. The majority of these groups want independence for Kashmir or to join India’s arch-rival Pakistan. They have not, like Daesh, sought to establish an empire across the Muslim world.
Nuclear powers India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and came to the brink of a third earlier this year after a suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group killed at least 40 paramilitary police in the Indian-controlled portion of the region.
A spokesman for India’s home ministry, which is responsible for security in Kashmir, did not respond to a request for comment.
Daesh claims ‘province’ in India for first time after clash in Kashmir
Daesh claims ‘province’ in India for first time after clash in Kashmir
- Daesh's Amaq News Agency late announced the new province, that it called “Wilayah of Hind,”
- Daesh has stepped up hit-and-run raids and suicide attacks
ICE agents to help with security at Winter Olympics
ROME: Agents from the divisive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will help support US security operations for the Winter Olympic Games in Italy next month, a spokesperson told AFP.
“At the Olympics, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is supporting the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and host nation to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organizations,” the agency said in a statement.
“All security operations remain under Italian authority.”
It added: “Obviously, ICE does not conduct immigration enforcement operations in foreign countries.”
The potential presence of ICE agents at the February 6-22 Games has sparked huge debate in Italy, following the outcry over the deaths of two civilians during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Italian authorities initially denied the presence of ICE and then sought to downplay any role, suggesting they would help only in security for the US delegation.
US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are attending the opening ceremony in Milan on February 6.
On Monday, the president of the northern Lombardy region, which is hosting some of the Olympic events, said their involvement would be limited to monitoring Vance and Rubio.
“It will be only in a defensive role, but I am convinced that nothing will happen,” Attilio Fontana told reporters.
However, his office then issued a statement saying he did not have any information on their presence, but was responding to a hypothetical question.
Thousands of ICE agents have been deployed by President Donald Trump in various US cities to carry out a crackdown on illegal immigration.
Their actions have prompted widespread protests, and the recent killings of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, on the streets of Minneapolis sparked outrage.
