IS fighters: ‘These are our lions, it’s the first drops’
“The lions of Islam have avenged our prophet”, said Abu Mussab, a Syrian who fights with the Islamic State, which has captured broad swathes of Iraq and Syria.
“These are our lions. It’s the first drops — more will follow,” he said, speaking from Syria. He said he and his fellow fighters were happy. “Let these crusaders be scared because they should be.” No group has so far claimed responsibility.
Abu Mussab said he did not know the gunmen who carried out the attack, but added “they are on the path of the emir .... and our Sheikh Osama (bin Laden).”
His reference to the emir is to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose group is a powerful anti- government paramilitary force in Iraq and Syria and has a growing network of followers elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia.
Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011. In 2013 the Yemen wing of al-Qaida published a notice called “Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam” featuring several outspoken critics of Islam, including Stephane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, who was killed yesterday.
On the Twitter social media site, militant sympathisers expressed profound satisfaction. One wrote: “Oh dog of the Romans in France, by god, by god, by god, we will not stop at targeting Charlie Hebdo magazine. What is coming is worse.”
The Arabic phrases #parisburns and #revengefortheprophet were among the hashtags used by many admirers of the shooting.
One supporter tweeted, “The word of allahu akbar (god is greatest) shakes Paris”.
A Twitter account called al-Marsad, which says it tracks news in the Islamic world, praised the attack: “Your planes strike Muslim children with impunity and our lions roam your streets.
Condemnation came from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, the Egyptian government and Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Al-Azhar.
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