admin
ANTALYA/PARIS/WASHINGTON. – Leaders of the emerging-market bloc of BRICS yesterday strongly condemned the recent terror attacks in Paris. The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met in this Turkish resort city on the sidelines of the 10th summit of the Group of 20 major economies. Several Republican presidential candidates on Saturday accused President Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton, of failing in the fight against Islamic State militants as the terrorist attacks in Paris became a focal point of the nomination race.
Carly Fiorina, the former technology CEO, criticised the Obama administration for the “murder, the mayhem, the danger, the tragedy that we see unfolding in Paris, in the Middle East, around the world and too often in our own homeland.”
“I am angry that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared victory in Iraq in 2011, abandoned all of our hard-won gains for political expediency and contrary to the advice of every general that spoke with them, thus leaving vast swaths of territory and too much weaponry to be gobbled up by ISIS,” Fiorina told those at the Sunshine Summit, a political gathering of Florida Republicans.
Donald Trump said the Paris attacks would have been “a much, much different situation” had the victims been armed with guns, as he argued against stricter gun control measures in the US. The billionaire real estate mogul said the US should be more aggressive against ISIS and called the United States “insane” to accept any refugees from Syria in the wake of the Paris attacks.
In an interview with Fox News, Florida Senator Marco Rubio responded to the attacks by saying: “This is a civilisation war. This is a civilisation conflict. This is not a geopolitical grievance that these people have with us. This is, basically, they believe the entire world needs to believe in what they believe in, or you die.” Meanwhile, a Syrian passport bearing the name “Ahmad Almohammad,” found on the body of one of the eight terrorists who carried out the Paris attacks, appears to be a fake. The jihadist obtained it in Turkey, intelligence officials reported.
According to some reports, two Syrian passports were found on the bodies of two of the terrorists, but Paris police sources say they were both fakes. Yesterday, the Serbian newspaper Blic printed a picture of the passport reported to belong to a 25-year-old Syrian called Ahmad Almohammad, who carried out a suicide bombing close to the Stade de France.
Serbian officials told the paper that Almohammad entered Serbia from Macedonia on October 7 and formally applied for exile. He passed a security check for weapons there, and was not armed. According to recent reports, the fake passport did not contain the correct numbers for a legitimate Syrian passport.
Almohammad arrived in Macedonia after previously entering Greece on October 3. After Serbia, he was registered again at a refugee centre in Croatia, after which he reportedly travelled to Western Europe through Hungary and Austria.
Sources in the French police yesterday reported the identification of one of the eight terrorists who carried out Friday’s attacks, 29-year-old Omar Ismail Mostefai, a French citizen of Algerian origin. Mostefai was one of three gunmen who opened fire at the Bataclan theater, killing 89 people during a concert. The terror attacks on Friday left 129 people dead and 352 injured. – Xinhua/AP/Sputnik News.
Online Reporter