ISIS has started to encourage its followers in Europe to use commercial drones to “strike them from the sky”. The latest threat from the resurgent Islamist terror group, which plans to unleash attacks across the West this year, came from ISIS-K’s official media arm, the Al-Azaim Foundation.
The propaganda arm published a poster of a European football stadium and a drone in flight.
The text on the poster reads: “If they constrict and oppress you on the ground, then strike them from the sky.”
The poster encourages ISIS militants to carry out improvised and weaponised drone attacks on football stadiums across Europe.
It comes just days after the same propaganda arm posted a poster showing ISIS militants alongside Champions League football fixtures. The chilling caption on that poster read: “Kill them all.”
Another poster called for followers “to recreate the glory” of the simultaneous shootings and suicide bombings that terrorised Paris in November 2015.
This week’s threat prompted an increase in security at the high-profile European games, with thousands of police drafted in for last night’s games in Paris and Madrid.
UK counter-terrorist police also urged Premier League clubs to be alert and review safety procedures.
The new tactic will raise concern among European security officials, given the threat posed by relatively cheap, commercially available, and easy-to-pilot drones.
Drone technology is increasingly common on the modern battlefield, where unmanned aerial vehicles can be equipped with explosives or other deadly materials.
Last year, UK counterterrorism authorities apprehended one person who was later found guilty of building a drone “specifically to transport an explosive or chemical weapon into enemy territory for ISIS.”
After being crushed by a US-led coalition, ISIS has slowly rebuilt its capabilities in recent years through underground sleeper cells.
The group’s violent splinter group, known as ISIS-K, has been particularly active in recent months and claimed responsibility for a mass-fatality attack at a concert near Moscow last month that killed 143 people.
ISIS-K also carried out twin bombings in Iran that killed nearly 100 people earlier this year.
ISIS-K, although based in Afghanistan, has recruited disaffected Muslims in China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
