Dozens of civilians, 12 US troops killed in Kabul airport blasts

Suicide bombers struck the crowded gates of Kabul airport with at least two explosions on Thursday, causing a bloodbath among civilians and US troops, and bringing a catastrophic halt to the airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to flee.

Two US officials put the US death toll at 12 service members killed, making it one of the deadliest incidents for American troops of the entire 20-year war.

There was no complete toll of Afghan civilians but video images uploaded by Afghan journalists showed dozens of bodies of people killed in packed crowds outside the airport.

A watery ditch by the airport fence was filled with bloodsoaked corpses, some being fished out and laid in heaps on the canal side while wailing civilians searched for loved ones.

Several Western countries said the airlift of civilians was now effectively over, with the United States having sealed the gates of the airport leaving no way out for tens of thousands of Afghans who worked for the West through two decades of war.

A Taliban official said at least 13 people including children had been killed in the attack and 52 were wounded, though it was clear from video footage that those figures were far from complete. One surgical hospital run by an Italian charity said it alone was treating more than 60 wounded.

The explosions took place amid the crowds outside the airport who have been massing for days in hope of escaping in an airlift which the United States says will end by Tuesday, following the swift capture of the country by the Taliban.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but US officials pointed the finger at Islamic State's Afghan affiliate, ISIS-Khorosan, which has emerged as enemies of both the West and of the Taliban.

A witness who gave his name as Jamshed said he went to the airport in the hope of getting a visa for the United States.

"There was a very strong and powerful suicide attack, in the middle of the people. Many were killed, including Americans," he said.

'COMPLEX ATTACK'

Zubair, a 24 year-old civil engineer, who had been trying for a nearly week to get inside the airport with a cousin who had papers authorizing him to travel to the United States, said he was 50 meters from the first of two suicide bombers who detonated explosives at the gate.

"Men, women and children were screaming. I saw many injured people – men, women and children – being loaded into private vehicles and taken toward the hospitals," he said. After the explosions there was gunfire.

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said on Twitter: "We can confirm that the explosion at the Abbey Gate was the result of a complex attack that resulted in a number of US and civilian casualties. We can also confirm at least one other explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, a short distance from Abbey Gate."

Taliban official Suhail Shaheen said there were two explosions in a crowded area managed by US forces. "We strongly condemn this gruesome incident and will take every step to bring the culprits to justice."

The Taliban did not identify the attackers, but a spokesman described it as the work of "evil circles" who would be suppressed once the foreign troops leave.

Washington and its allies had been urging civilians to stay away from the airport on Thursday, citing the threat of an Islamic State suicide attack.

In the past 12 days, Western countries have evacuated nearly 100,000 people, mostly Afghans who helped them. But they say many thousands more will be left behind following President Joe Biden's order to pull out all troops by Aug 31.

The last few days of the airlift will mostly be used to withdraw the remaining troops. Canada and some European countries have already announced the end of their airlifts, while publicly lamenting Biden's abrupt pullout.

AIRPORT DOORS 'CLOSED'

"The doors at the airport are now closed and it is no longer possible to get people in," Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said on Thursday.

"We wish we could have stayed longer and rescued everyone," the acting chief of Canada's defense staff, General Wayne Eyre, told reporters.

Biden ordered all troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the month to comply with a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban negotiated by his predecessor Donald Trump. He spurned calls this week from European allies for more time.

The abrupt collapse of the Western-backed government in Afghanistan caught US officials by surprise and risks reversing gains, especially in the rights of women and girls, millions of whom have been going to school and work, once forbidden under the Taliban.

Biden has defended the decision to leave, saying US forces could not stay indefinitely. But his critics say the US force, which once numbered more than 100,000, had been reduced in recent years to just a few thousand troops, no longer involved in fighting on the ground and mainly confined to an air base. It was a fraction of the size of US military contingents that have stayed in places such as Korea for decades.

The US troops killed on Thursday were the first to die in action in Afghanistan in 18 months.

Violence from Islamic State creates a headache for the Taliban who have promised that their victory will bring peace to Afghanistan at last. Fighters claiming allegiance to Islamic State began appearing in eastern Afghanistan at the end of 2014 and have established a reputation for extreme brutality.

Since the day before the Taliban swept into Kabul, the United States and its allies have mounted one of the biggest air evacuations in history, bringing out about 95,700 people, including 13,400 on Wednesday, the White House said on Thursday.

The Taliban have encouraged Afghans to stay, while saying those with permission to leave will still be allowed to do so once foreign troops leave and commercial flights resume.

The Taliban's 1996-2001 rule was marked by public executions and the curtailment of basic freedoms. The group was overthrown two decades ago by US-led forces for hosting the al Qaeda militants who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The Taliban have said they will respect human rights in line with Islamic law and will not allow terrorists to operate from the country.

-reuters-

Police shoot man dead after London stabbing incident described as terrorism

LONDON - Police shot dead a man in south London on Sunday after two people were stabbed in what police described as a terrorism-related incident.

Armed officers shot the man in Streatham, a busy residential district south of the River Thames.

"The circumstances are being assessed; the incident has been declared as terrorist-related," the police said on Twitter.

Police said later the man they had shot had been pronounced dead, and two people had been wounded.

"We await updates on their condition," police said, adding the scene of the incident was now fully contained.

Karker Tahir, a man who was working nearby, told Sky News that the man was shot three times. Police had told people in the area to leave because the man had a bomb in his bag, Tahir said.

A Western security source said the incident was related to Islamist militancy.

Armed police cordoned off the area and said people should avoid the area.

Several videos of the scene were posted on Twitter, but not verified by Reuters. In one, filmed from inside a shop across the road, a man can be seen lying on the street while at least two armed police officers point their guns from behind an unmarked car with its blue lights flashing.

At least one helicopter flew overhead and police cars were in surrounding streets, with the area blocked off by tape.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Twitter: "Thank you to all emergency services responding to the incident in Streatham, which the police have now declared as terrorism-related".

"My thoughts are with the injured and all those affected," he added.

The last such incident in London was in November, when police shot dead a man wearing a fake suicide vest who stabbed two people to death and wounded three more before being wrestled to the ground by bystanders.

That attack was carried out by a man with Islamist militant sympathies. He had been jailed for terrorism and released early.

London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, said in a statement after Sunday's incident: "Terrorists seek to divide us and to destroy our way of life - here in London we will never let them succeed." 

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper Writing by Peter Graff and Frances Kerry Editing by David Goodman and Angus MacSwan)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Terror returns to London Bridge in 'Black Friday' attack

LONDON—A man wearing a suspected hoax explosive device was shot dead by armed officers on London Bridge on Friday after what police said was a terrorist stabbing spree, reviving memories of another horrific attack 2 years ago that killed 8.

Footage on Twitter filmed by eyewitnesses showed a scrum of people tackling a man on the ground before specialist armed officers arrived and shot him dead as he tried to get up.

It is not known how many people were injured in the stabbing spree before the shooting but London Mayor Sadiq Khan said several people were "seriously" hurt.

Khan said members of the public risked their own safety to try to disarm the suspect. "They are the best of us," he told reporters.

The events came less than 2 weeks before an election at which Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to win a majority to enable him to take Britain out of the European Union.

The prime minister cut short a visit to his constituency in northwest London to return to his Downing Street office for a briefing by the police.

'Enough is enough,' PM May says after London attackers kill 7
Both Johnson's Conservatives and the main opposition Labour party have both pledged to put at least 20,000 more officers on the streets.

But Britain's impending Brexit has raised questions about the extent of continued cooperation with Europe on security and intelligence matters.

New European Council President Charles Michel said he had been "very saddened to hear the dramatic reports" from London, adding: "The fight against terrorism is a common fight."

Johnson praised the emergency services for their response, adding: "This country will never be cowed or divided or intimidated by this sort of attack.

"Our values, our British values will prevail."

MOTIVE UNKNOWN

The attack happened on so-called "Black Friday," one of the busiest shopping days of the year in the run-up to Christmas, bringing more shoppers onto the streets.

The Metropolitan Police said it was called at 1:58 pm (9:58 p.m. Manila time) to a stabbing near the bridge, which links The City financial district to the south bank of the River Thames.

"A male suspect was shot by specialist armed officers," Neil Basu, the head of UK counter-terrorism policing, told reporters outside New Scotland Yard police headquarters.

"This suspect died at the scene. It has been declared a terrorist incident. We retain an open mind as to any motive.

"We believe a device that was strapped to the body of the suspect was a hoax explosive device."


Several people were seen in video footage apparently surrounding the man on the ground. 

One man, wearing a suit and tie, was seen retreating from the scene, with what appeared to be a large knife in his right hand.

Three armed officers then appeared on the scene and surrounded the scrum. One officer pulled a man away before 2 shots appeared to be fired.

An eyewitness told reporters: "He was on the ground with a knife near him, and a bag near him and then they surrounded him and armed police shot him."

Another told the BBC she and other people in the area rushed into a nearby restaurant and were told by staff to take cover under tables.

The bridge was closed off, with evacuated buses at a standstill, and a white truck straddling the carriageways. Forensics officers were at the scene.

Johnson thanked the police and all emergency services "for their immediate response."

A White House spokesman said US President Donald Trump had been briefed on the attack and was monitoring the situation.

Trump, who has previously criticized Mayor Khan and stabbings in the British capital, is due to visit next week for a NATO summit.

THREAT LEVEL DOWNGRADED

Britain downgraded its terrorism threat level from "severe," the second-highest of 5 levels, to "substantial" on Nov. 4, its lowest rating in more than 5 years.

British officials consider a terrorist attack "likely" when the threat level is substantial, and "highly likely" when it is severe.

The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, an organization made up of government departments and other public bodies, makes the decision after weighing up intelligence and information on known terror groups.

The 2017 attack involved Islamist extremists in a van who ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge before attacking people at random with knives in nearby Borough Market.

Eight people were killed and 48 others injured. The 3 attackers, who were wearing fake suicide devices, were shot dead by police.

source:  news.abs-cbn.com

EXPLAINER: End-to-end encryption and chat privacy

SAN FRANCISCO — A Justice Department official hinted on Monday that a years-long fight over encrypted communications could become part of a sweeping investigation of big tech companies.

While a department spokesman declined to discuss specifics, a speech Monday by the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, pointed toward heightened interest in technology called end-to-end encryption, which makes it nearly impossible for law enforcement and spy agencies to access people’s digital communications.

Law enforcement and technologists have been arguing over encryption controls for more than two decades. On one side are privacy advocates and tech bosses like Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, who believe people should be able to have online communications free of snooping. On the other side are law enforcement and some lawmakers, who believe tough encryption makes it impossible to track child predators, terrorists and other criminals.

Attorney General William P. Barr, joined by his British and Australian counterparts, recently pressed Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to abandon plans to embed end-to-end encryption in services like Messenger and Instagram. WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, already provides that tougher encryption.

“Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes,” Barr wrote in a letter last month.

Here is an explanation of the technology and the stakes.

HOW DOES THE ENCRYPTION WORK?

End-to-end encryption scrambles messages in such a way that they can be deciphered only by the sender and the intended recipient. As the label implies, end-to-end encryption takes place on either end of a communication. A message is encrypted on a sender’s device, sent to the recipient’s device in an unreadable format, then decoded for the recipient.

There are several ways to do this, but the most popular works like this: A program on your device mathematically generates two cryptographic keys — a public key and a private key.

The public key can be shared with anyone who wants to encrypt a message to you. The private key, or secret key, decrypts messages sent to you and never leaves your device. Think of it like a locked mailbox. Anyone with a public key can put something in your box and lock it, but only you have the private key to unlock it.

HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER FORMS OF ENCRYPTION?

A more common form of encryption, known as transport layer encryption, relies on a third party, like a tech company, to encrypt messages as they move across the web.

With this type of encryption, law enforcement and intelligence agencies can get access to encrypted messages by presenting technology companies with a warrant or national security letter. The sender and recipient would not have to know about it.

End-to-end encryption ensures that no one can eavesdrop on the contents of a message while it is in transit. It forces spies or snoops to go directly to the sender or recipient to read the content of the encrypted message. Or they must hack directly into the sender’s or recipient’s device, something that can be harder to do “at scale” and makes mass surveillance much more difficult.

Privacy activists, libertarians, security experts and human rights activists argue that end-to-end encryption steers governments away from mass surveillance and toward a more targeted, constitutional form of intelligence gathering. But intelligence and law enforcement agencies argue that end-to-end encryption makes it much harder to track terrorists, pedophiles and human traffickers.

When Zuckerberg announced in March that Facebook would move all three of its messaging services to end-to-end encryption, he acknowledged the risk it presented for “truly terrible things like child exploitation.”

“Encryption is a powerful tool for privacy, but that includes the privacy of people doing bad things,” he said.

HASN'T THIS DEBATE BEEN AROUND FOR DECADES?

The debate over end-to-end encryption has had several iterations, beginning in the 1990s with the spread of Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, software, an end-to-end encryption scheme designed by a programmer named Phil Zimmermann. As a result, the Clinton administration proposed a “Clipper Chip,” a back door for law enforcement and security agencies.

But the Clipper Chip provoked a backlash from a coalition of unlikely bedfellows, including the American Civil Liberties Union; televangelist Pat Robertson; and Sens. John Kerry, (Democrat, Massachusetts), and John Ashcroft, (Republican, Montana). The White House backed down in 1996.

End-to-end encryption gained more traction in 2013, after data leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden appeared to show the extent to which the NSA and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies were gaining access to users’ communications through companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Facebook without their knowledge.

Encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Wicker gained in popularity, and tech giants like Apple and Facebook started wrapping user data in end-to-end encryption.

Google, which pledged to add an end-to-end encryption option for Gmail users several years ago, has not made this the default option for email. But the company does offer a video-calling app, Duo, that is end-to-end encrypted.

As more communications moved to these end-to-end encrypted services, law enforcement and intelligence services around the world started to complain about data’s “going dark.”

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS DOING?

Government agencies have tried to force technology companies to roll back end-to-end encryption, or build back doors, like the Clipper Chip of the 1990s, into their encrypted products to facilitate government surveillance.

In the most aggressive of these efforts, the FBI tried in 2016 to compel Apple in federal court to unlock the iPhone of one of the attackers in the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Cook of Apple called the FBI’s effort “the software equivalent of cancer.” He said complying with the request would open the door to more invasive government interception down the road.

“Maybe it’s an operating system for surveillance, maybe the ability for the law enforcement to turn on the camera,” Cook told ABC News. “I don’t know where it stops.”

Privacy activists and security experts noted that any back door created for US law enforcement agencies would inevitably become a target for foreign adversaries, cybercriminals and terrorists.

Alex Stamos, chief security officer of Yahoo at the time, likened the creation of an encryption back door to “drilling a hole in the windshield.” By trying to provide an entry point for one government, you end up cracking the structural integrity of the entire encryption shield.

The FBI eventually backed down. Instead of forcing Apple to create a back door, the agency said it had paid an outside party to hack into the phone of the San Bernardino gunman.

SO WHAT NOW?

Governments have stepped up their calls for an encryption back door.

Last year, Australian lawmakers passed a bill requiring technology companies to provide law enforcement and security agencies with access to encrypted communications. The bill gave the government the ability to get a court order allowing it to secretly order technology companies and technologists to re-engineer software and hardware so that it can be used to spy on users.

Australia’s law is based on Britain’s 2016 Investigatory Powers Act, which compels British companies to hand over the keys to unscramble encrypted data to law enforcement agencies. The Australian law could apply to overseas companies like Facebook and Apple.

Australia’s new law applies to network administrators, developers and other tech employees, forcing them to comply with secret government demands without notifying their employers.

Other governments are also considering new encryption laws. In India, Facebook’s biggest market, officials told the country’s Supreme Court in October that Indian law requires Facebook to decrypt messages and supply them to law enforcement upon request.

“They can’t come into the country and say, ‘We will establish a non-decryptable system,’” India’s attorney general, K.K. Venugopal, told the court, referring to Facebook and other big tech platforms. India’s Supreme Court has said it will reconvene on the issue in January.


2019 The New York Times Company

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Saudi says Baghdadi 'distorted' image of Islam

Saudi Arabia said Monday that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had distorted the image of Islam, and hailed his killing by US special forces in northwestern Syria.

"The kingdom appreciates the US administration's efforts to pursue members of this terrorist organisation that distorted the real image of Islam... and committed atrocities and crimes," said a Saudi foreign ministry source, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

"Saudi Arabia continues its efforts with its allies, especially the United States, in fighting terrorism," the source added.

US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that Baghdadi had died "like a dog" in an overnight raid by US special forces in Syria.

Trump said many IS jihadists had been killed in the raid and that Baghdadi had detonated a suicide vest when he was cornered in a tunnel.

IS had seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, imposing a violent form of Islamic rule on some seven million residents of its "caliphate", headed by Baghdadi.

The Iraqi, believed to be 48 years old, was rarely seen during his years as leader of the group, last appearing in a propaganda video in April.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

At least 28 killed in mosque blast in Afghanistan

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - At least 28 worshippers were killed and dozens wounded by a blast inside an Afghan mosque during Friday prayers, officials said, a day after the United Nations said violence in the country had reached "unacceptable" levels.

The explosion, which witnesses said collapsed the mosque's roof, took place in eastern Nangarhar province and wounded at least 55 people, provincial governor spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP.

He said the dead were "all worshippers" in the blast in Haska Mina district, roughly 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the provincial capital Jalalabad.

A doctor at a hospital in Haska Mina gave a slightly higher toll, telling AFP that "around" 32 bodies had been brought in, along with 50 wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Both the Taliban and the Islamic State group are active in Nangarhar province.

Witnesses said the roof of the mosque had fallen through after the "loud" explosion, the nature of which was not immediately clear.

"Dozens of people were killed and wounded and were taken in several ambulances," Haji Amanat Khan, a 65-year-old local resident, told AFP.

The blast came after the UN released a new report on Thursday saying an "unprecedented" number of civilians were killed or wounded in Afghanistan from July to September.

The report, which also charts violence throughout 2019 so far, underscores how "Afghans have been exposed to extreme levels of violence for many years" despite promises by all sides to "prevent and mitigate harm to civilians."

It also noted the absurdity of the ever-increasing price paid by civilians given the widespread belief that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won by either side.

"Civilian casualties are totally unacceptable," said the UN's special representative in Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, adding they demonstrate the importance of talks leading to a ceasefire and a permanent political settlement.

The figures - 1,174 deaths and 3,139 injured from July 1 until September 30 - represent a 42-percent increase compared to the same period last year.

The UN laid most of the blame for the spike at the feet of "anti-government elements" such as the Taliban, who have been carrying out a bloody insurgency in Afghanistan for more than 18 years.

July alone saw more casualties than in any other month on record since the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) began documenting the violence in 2009.

The first six months of 2019 had seen casualties drop slightly compared to previous years.

But the violence has surged so far in the third quarter that it yanked the overall total for the year back on par with the bloodiest since NATO withdrew its combat forces at the end of 2014.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

West African leaders pledge $1 billion to fight Islamist threat

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - West African leaders have pledged $1 billion to combat the spiraling threat of Islamist militancy in the region, the head of the regional ECOWAS bloc said on Saturday.

Groups with links to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have strengthened their foothold across the arid Sahel region this year, making large swathes of territory ungovernable and stoking local ethnic violence, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso.

The fifteen members of the West African bloc and the presidents of Mauritania and Chad had gathered for an extraordinary summit in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, to address the growing insecurity.

ECOWAS Commission President Jean-Claude Kassi Brou said the commission had decided to "contribute financially and urgently to joint efforts in the fight against terrorism" by pledging $1 billion.

In a speech following the closed meeting, Brou also called on the United Nations to strengthen its MINUSMA peacekeeping mission, which has been based in Mali since 2013.

In July, the U.N. said Islamist attacks were spreading so fast in West Africa that the region should consider bolstering its response beyond current military efforts.

In 2017, five countries - Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania - backed by France, launched the G5 Sahel taskforce to combat the insurgents. But the initiative has been perennially underfunded.

The situation in Burkina Faso has deteriorated in particular in recent weeks. An attack in late August killed 24 soldiers, one of the heaviest losses yet in the nation's fight against Islamist militants. Last week, 29 people were killed in separate attacks in its troubled central-northern region.

Once a pocket of relative calm in the Sahel, Burkina has suffered a homegrown insurgency for the past three years, which has been amplified by a spillover of jihadist violence and criminality from its chaotic neighbor Mali.

Large swathes of Burkina's north are now out of control, and France's military Sahel mission began limited operations there earlier this year.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Terrorists turn to Bitcoin for funding, and they’re learning fast

SAN FRANCISCO -- Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, has been designated a terrorist organization by Western governments and some others and has been locked out of the traditional financial system. But this year, its military wing has developed an increasingly sophisticated campaign to raise money using Bitcoin.

In the latest version of the website set up by the wing, known as the Qassam Brigades, every visitor is given a unique Bitcoin address where he or she can send the digital currency, a method that makes the donations nearly impossible for law enforcement to track.

The site, which is available in 7 languages and features the brigades’ logo, with a green flag and a machine gun, contains a well-produced video that explains how to acquire and send Bitcoin without tipping off authorities.

Terrorists have been slow to join other criminal elements that have been drawn to Bitcoin and have used it for everything from drug purchases to money laundering.

But in recent months, government authorities and organizations that track terrorist financing have begun to raise alarms about an uptick in the number of Islamist terrorist organizations experimenting with Bitcoin and other digital coins.

The yields from individual campaigns appear to be modest — in the tens of thousands of dollars. But authorities note that terrorist attacks often require little funding. And the groups’ use of cryptocurrencies appears to be getting more sophisticated.

“You are going to see more of this,” said Yaya Fanusie, a former analyst with the CIA who now does consulting on rogue actors using cryptocurrencies. “This is going to be a part of the terrorist financing mix, and it is something that people should pay attention to.”

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has drawn attention to the issue in two speeches in recent months, calling for more active monitoring from cryptocurrency businesses.

“We are dedicating a lot of resources very specifically to this space,” Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an interview. “It is still relatively new to them, but I’m confident that we’re going to see more of it in the future.”

Cryptocurrencies are attractive to lawbreakers because they make it possible to hold and transfer money without a central authority, like PayPal, that can shut down accounts and freeze funds. Anyone in the world can create a Bitcoin address and begin receiving digital tokens without even providing a name or address.

The online markets where Bitcoin can buy drugs are hosting nearly $1 billion in commerce a year, even as authorities have shut down numerous leading markets.

Countries that are facing US economic sanctions, like Iran, Venezuela and Russia, have also taken steps toward creating their own cryptocurrencies to circumvent them.

Bitcoin has been slower to take off among terrorists in part because of its technical sophistication, terrorism experts said. Terrorist groups have also had methods of using the traditional financial system without needing Bitcoin.

Hamas, which controls the Palestinian coastal territory of Gaza, has traditionally survived on hundreds of millions of dollars of donations from foreign governments like Qatar. The Islamic State in Syria subsisted on taxes and fees it collected in the territories it controlled.

But both organizations have seen their access to money significantly curtailed. Israel maintains a strict blockade of Gaza, with Egypt’s help, and Hamas has been squeezed over the last year by financial cuts imposed by the rival, Western-backed Palestinian Authority. And the Islamic State group has lost most of its territory.

“They seem to be reacting to all the economic sanctions by saying, ‘We are going to try using Bitcoin,’” said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of Middle East Media Research Institute, a nonprofit that tracks and translates communication from terrorist groups.

Stalinsky’s organization, known as Memri, is about to publish a 253-page report about the increased signs of cryptocurrency use by terrorist organizations, particularly groups in Syria that are on the run as Islamic militants have lost almost all the territory they used to hold.

A leading sheikh with one of the biggest terrorist groups in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, posted a long video to his online followers in July, explaining the origins of Bitcoin and declaring that it is permissible to use for charitable donations, according to a translation of the video by Memri.

A number of online researchers have recently discovered campaigns by Syrian militants that asked followers to send donations to Bitcoin addresses they posted on Telegram, a popular social network. One post, found by Raphael Gluck, an independent researcher, put the Bitcoin address under the picture of a man wearing camouflage and shooting a military-style rifle.

Signs that terrorists were using Bitcoin had been sporadic for several years. Fanusie, the former CIA analyst, drew public attention to a fundraising campaign begun in 2016 by the Mujahedeen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, a group based in Gaza that is designated a terrorist organization.

But the early efforts were clumsy. The Gaza campaign provided a single Bitcoin address, which made it easier for law enforcement to track where the money was coming from. The wallet advertised by the group took in only a few thousand dollars’ worth of Bitcoin.

When the Qassam Brigades began collecting money late last year, an Israeli research firm, Whitestream, determined that Hamas was keeping at least some of the money in wallets that were set up with American cryptocurrency company Coinbase.

Coinbase’s chief compliance officer, Jeff Horowitz, said that after tying the account to the Qassam Brigades, it immediately froze the account and reported it to US authorities.

An American man was arrested in May on accusations that he made small donations to the Qassam campaign and bragged about them on social media.

But the Qassam Brigades learned to cover their tracks. Instead of keeping a wallet with a Bitcoin exchange, which can track information about customers and send it to authorities, the terrorist group set up wallets fully under its control.

The Qassam site also started providing a new Bitcoin address to each potential donor, a practice that is essentially impossible with traditional financial accounts. The Qassam Brigades appear to have borrowed the method from a media site connected to the Islamic State, which has been generating endless numbers of new Bitcoin addresses to collect money for nearly two years.

The Qassam Brigades did not reply to several requests for comment.

“The terrorists are learning how to send and receive digital currency in a smarter way,” said Itsik Levy, chief executive of Whitestream, the Israeli intelligence firm tracking Bitcoin transactions. “Why would terrorists not take advantage of this? It is great for them.”

Levy said the sums being sent were likely to be small, but were getting harder to track.

The Treasury Department, under Mnuchin, has been promoting international rules that would require cryptocurrency exchanges to do a full identity check on anyone sending digital tokens out of a wallet.

This could make it easier to spot certain illegal transactions. But terrorists and other criminals who use cryptocurrency are already picking up methods that would make it easier to circumvent the new rules, in part by using cryptocurrencies that provide even more privacy than Bitcoin.

Juan Zarate, who was the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism under President George W. Bush, said this was far from the biggest illegal use of cryptocurrencies but one that needed to be watched.

“I think we are still in the experimentation phase for terrorist groups — they are trying to figure out how best to do this,” said Zarate, now an adviser to Coinbase. “What’s a challenge is that you see them continuing to experiment.”

2019 The New York Times Company

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Racism, misogyny: US authorities probe motives of 2 gunmen

One was fueled by racist hatred of immigrants and warned of a "Hispanic invasion." The other's motives are less clear but he apparently resented women and compiled a "hit list" of girls in high school.

Police and the FBI were trying to piece together on Tuesday what drove two young American men to commit unspeakable acts of carnage over the weekend.

Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old unemployed white man from the Dallas suburb of Allen, opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon at a Walmart on Saturday in El Paso, Texas.

About 20 minutes before the rampage, which left 22 people dead, he posted a four-page white supremacist "manifesto" on the online forum 8chan that railed against Hispanics.

In the document titled "The Inconvenient Truth," Crusius wrote that the attack "is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

Crusius claimed he was "defending" the US "from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion" and made references to the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand, where a white gunman killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in March.

El Paso police chief Greg Allen said Crusius has not shown any remorse since his arrest and "appears to be in a state of shock and confusion."

According to court documents, Crusius has been unemployed for the past five months and living with his grandparents.

In a statement, his grandparents said he had lived with them while attending classes at Collin County College but moved out of their home about six weeks ago.

According to CNN, a Twitter account linked to Crusius frequently shared tweets by President Donald Trump including one with Trump's name spelled out with guns.

In a LinkedIn profile, Crusius wrote, "I'm not really motivated to do anything more than what's necessary to get by.

"Working in general sucks, but i guess a career in Software Development suits me well. I spend about 8 hours every day on the computer so that counts towards technology experience I guess."

El Paso is about a nine-hour drive from the Dallas area and Crusius appears to have deliberately selected the city because of its heavily Hispanic population.

El Paso lies on the Rio Grande River which marks the US border with Mexico, and has a population of 680,000, of which 83 percent are of Hispanic descent.

- 'An oddball' -

The motivations of the other gunman, Connor Betts, 24, are less clear but several former friends told US media that he had a history of disturbing behavior, particularly towards women.

Also armed with a semi-automatic weapon, Betts killed nine people including his sister, 22-year-old Megan Betts, in Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday morning. He was shot dead by police within a minute.

Investigators have found no evidence so far to indicate that the shooting was motivated by racial hatred.

"Just based on where we're at now we are not seeing any indication of race being a motive," Dayton police chief Richard Biehl said.

Betts was white and six of his nine victims were black.

Mika Carpenter, 24, who has known Betts since she was 13 years old, told The New York Times "he was kind of hateful to women because they didn't want to date him."

The Dayton Daily News reported that Betts had been suspended from Bellbrook High School for drawing up a "hit list" of girls.

According to Buzzfeed News, Betts was a member of a "pornogrind" heavy metal band called Menstrual Munchies which performed songs with themes of sexual violence.

Demoy Howell, a friend of Betts, told the Dayton Daily News that Betts was "always a bit of an oddball."

"He had a dark sense of humor -- jokes about people dying," Howell told the newspaper. "He would wear all black. I remember sensing a dark energy around him.

"I think this is less of a hate crime and more of an 'I hate everybody' crime," Howell said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

US prosecutors charge Texas shooting suspect with murder, seek death penalty

EL PASO, Texas - A single capital murder charge was filed on Sunday against the man accused of killing 20 people and wounding more than two dozen others at a Walmart store in El Paso, a mass shooting authorities are viewing as a case of domestic terrorism.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday's rampage in the heavily Hispanic city appeared to be a hate crime. Police cited an anti-immigrant screed posted online shortly before the shooting, which they attributed to the suspect, Patrick Crusius, as evidence that the bloodshed was racially motivated.

It was the second of three separate public shooting sprees carried out in the United States in the span of a week, an unusually dense cluster of massacres that prompted fresh alarm in a country accustomed to reports of young men shooting down strangers.

The County of El Paso's state court website lists a single charge of capital murder against Crusius, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Texas.

His grandparents, with whom Crusius had recently been living, said they were devastated by the attack.

"He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he attended Collin College," the statement said, read aloud by a family friend to reporters outside the home on Sunday. "He moved out of our house six weeks ago, and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town."

The single charge is likely a legal place holder to keep Crusius in custody until further charges can be filed against him for each of the dead and the wounded.

It was unclear if Crusius has a lawyer or when a bond hearing or other court appearances will occur.

A state prosecutor said prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Crusius if he is found guilty.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Sunday the attack "underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violent extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes."

The agency said it remains concerned that more US-based extremists could become inspired by these and previous high-profile attacks to engage in similar acts of violence.

The US attorney for the western district of Texas, John Bash, said federal authorities were treating the El Paso massacre as a case of domestic terrorism.

"And we're going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which is to deliver swift and certain justice," he told a news conference on Sunday. He said the attack appeared "to be designed to intimidate a civilian population, to say the least."

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel on July 23 that the bureau has recorded about 100 arrests of domestic terrorism suspects in the preceding nine months and that most investigations of that kind involve some form of white supremacy.

BACK-TO-BACK SHOOTINGS

The Texas rampage was followed just 13 hours later by another mass shooting, and came a week after a man shot dead three people at a California garlic festival before he was killed by police.

In Dayton, Ohio a gunman in body armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and wounded 27 others in the city's downtown historic district before he was shot dead by police.

Democratic candidates for next year's presidential election called on Sunday for stricter gun laws and accused President Donald Trump of stoking racial tensions.

Trump has frequently derided many asylum seekers and other immigrants coming across the US southern border as liars and criminals. At a political rally he held in May, after asking the crowd what could be done about immigrants coming in illegally, Trump smiled and joked after someone in the crowd yelled back: "Shoot them!"

Responding to the shootings, Trump called on lawmakers to pass new background checks laws for buying guns, and suggested any such legislation might also include greater restrictions on immigration.

"We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!" he wrote on Twitter on Monday morning ahead of planned remarks on the subject. On Sunday, he attributed the shootings to what he called the "mental illness" of the killers.

SIGNS OF HATE

El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect was cooperating with investigators.

"He basically didn't hold anything back," Allen said at Sunday's news conference, but declined to elaborate.

Police said the suspect opened fire with a rifle on shoppers, many of them bargain-hunting for back-to-school supplies, then surrendered to officers who confronted him outside the store.

A police spokesman said on Sunday that the names of the victims would be released only when relatives had been informed, and he said he had no estimate for how long that would take.

Crusius comes from Allen, Texas, a Dallas suburb some 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande across the US-Mexico border from Ciudad Juarez.

A four-page statement posted on 8chan, an online message board often used by extremists, and believed to have been written by the suspect, called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

It also expressed for support for the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.

El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.

The rampage in El Paso on Saturday was the eighth most deadly mass shooting in recent years in the United States.

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Whistleblower says Facebook generating terror content

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook is unwittingly auto-generating content for terror-linked groups that its artificial intelligence systems do not recognize as extremist, according to a complaint made public on Thursday.

The National Whistleblowers Center in Washington carried out a five-month study of the pages of 3,000 members who liked or connected to organizations proscribed as terrorist by the US government.

Researchers found that the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda were "openly" active on the social network.

More worryingly, the Facebook's own software was automatically creating "celebration" and "memories" videos for extremist pages that had amassed sufficient views or "likes."

The Whistleblower's Center said it filed a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of a source that preferred to remain anonymous.

"Facebook's efforts to stamp out terror content have been weak and ineffectual," read an executive summary of the 48-page document shared by the center.

"Of even greater concern, Facebook itself has been creating and promoting terror content with its auto-generate technology."

Survey results shared in the complaint indicated that Facebook was not delivering on its claims about eliminating extremist posts or accounts.

The company told AFP it had been removing terror-linked content "at a far higher success rate than even two years go" since making heavy investments in technology.

"We don't claim to find everything and we remain vigilant in our efforts against terrorist groups around the world," the company said.

Facebook and other social media platforms have been under fire for not doing enough to curb messages of hate and violence, while at the same time criticized for failing to offer equal time for all viewpoints, no matter how unpleasant.

Facebook in March announced bans at the social network and Instagram on praise or support for white nationalism and white separatism.

gc/ft

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Hamas shifts tactics in bitcoin fundraising, highlighting crypto risks - research

LONDON/JERUSALEM - The armed wing of Hamas is using increasingly complex methods of raising funds via bitcoin, researchers say, highlighting the difficulties regulators face in tracking cryptocurrency financing of outfits designated by some as terrorist groups.

The Gaza-based Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, which is proscribed by the United States and the European Union, has been calling on its supporters to donate using the digital currency in a fundraising campaign announced online in late January.

Originally, it asked donors to send bitcoin to a single digital address, or wallet.

However, according to research shared with Reuters by leading blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, in recent weeks it has changed the mechanism, with its website generating a new digital wallet with every transaction.

This makes it harder for companies around the world to keep tabs on the group's cryptocurrency financing, the researchers said. A single digital wallet can be red-flagged to cryptocurrency exchanges, in theory allowing them to prevent funds moving through their systems to that destination.

But a different wallet for each donation makes this so-called tagging far more complicated, Elliptic said.

Between March 26 and April 16, 0.6 bitcoin - worth around $3,300 - was sent to the website-created wallets, Elliptic's research found. All told, the four-month fundraising campaign has raised around $7,400, the firm said.

A spokesman for Hamas, which has ruled the Palestinian territory of Gaza since 2007, declined to comment on Elliptic's research.

Such funds are a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars in annual funding that Israel and the United States says Hamas receives from Iran. Yet the campaign gives insight into how a proscribed group has gone about bitcoin fundraising.

"They are still in experimentation stage - trying it out, seeing how much they can raise, and whether it works," said Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson.

Iran has not publicly detailed its funding of Hamas, though it has not denied its support for the group. Hamas has said Tehran is the biggest backer of the al-Qassam Brigades.

London-based Elliptic and U.S. rival Chainalysis are the most prominent blockchain analysis firms, and have gained traction as watchdogs, cryptocurrency companies and firms such as hedge funds seek tools to track digital coins.

Backed by investors including Banco Santander's venture capital arm, Elliptic's clients include financial firms, regulators and law enforcement agencies in Europe and the United States.

Since 2016 it has won contracts with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service and Drug Enforcement Administration, according to USAspending.gov, a database of U.S. government contracts.

Examples of cryptocurrency funding campaigns by proscribed groups are rare. But the research underscores headaches for companies in the emerging sector in identifying and stamping out exposure to potentially tainted digital coins, even as tools for tracking and tracing cryptocurrencies grow more sophisticated.

Dealing with illegal usage is seen as vital if cryptocurrencies are to grow from niche, speculative tokens to assets embraced by the mainstream. Most big financial firms have steered clear of bitcoin and its kin, with money laundering chief among concerns.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union. Others, including Britain, have proscribed only the al-Qassam Brigades.

Such a designation means that, in the United States for instance, it is illegal to provide money or training, with financial firms in control of related funds obliged to report them to the authorities.

A two-minute video on the al-Qassam Brigades website lays out step-by-step instructions in Arabic on how supporters can avoid the traditional financial system and donate cryptocurrency.

"How to support the Palestinian resistance via Bitcoin?" it asks.

With polished graphics and English subtitles, it explains how to send bitcoin directly, through a money-exchange office, or via a cryptocurrency exchange. "Use a public device so that the wallet is not linked to your IP address," it says.

Elliptic uses a database of information linking digital coin addresses to exchanges, darkweb marketplaces, and proscribed groups to track cryptocurrencies.

It pinpointed wallets created by the website by tracking patterns in their unique addresses. The firm monitored these addresses, later identifying multiple transactions that sent funds from the addresses to a major Asia-based cryptocurrency exchange.

Thirteen of the donations were made from a separate exchange, also from Asia, said Elliptic, which declined to give further details of the exchanges. It was not clear whether the bitcoin had since been converted to traditional currencies, the firm said.

PATCHY REGULATION

Hamas's finances are suffering. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in 2013 closed hundreds of tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, preventing the smuggling of weapons and goods from cows to cars, depriving Hamas of tax income.

Funding from Iran has also declined following Hamas's condemnation of the killing of Sunni Muslims in Syria's civil war, analysts say.

Bitcoin could provide respite in that cash squeeze.

"It makes it difficult for such funds to be tracked by financial authorities," said Lotem Finkelshtein, head of threat intelligence at Check Point Technologies, a cybersecurity firm in Tel Aviv.

"It's not so simple to link wallets to organisations."

Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency, defense ministry and military declined to comment.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who is also a member of the national security cabinet, told the website Ynet TV this month he was unaware of the fundraising.

Regulators and law enforcement agencies have long worried about the potential of digital money - relatively anonymous and easily available online - to finance terrorism.

Cryptocurrency regulations vary from country to country. The global watchdog for money laundering, aware of gaps in rules, is due to bring in the first international standards on cryptocurrency oversight by June.

But with regulation still patchy, the risk of exposure to tainted coins has kept most big investors away.

Even indirect exposure to tainted cryptocurrencies would present problems for financial firms, said Kyle Phillips, a lawyer at Fieldfisher law firm.

"There are real issues with establishing the beneficial owners," he said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

New Zealand passes new gun laws in wake of Christchurch terror attack

New Zealand's Parliament passed on Wednesday tough new gun laws including a ban on most types of semi-automatic weapons, less than a month after a gunman stormed two Christchurch mosques, killing 50 people.

The Arms Amendment Bill was opposed by only one lawmaker when it passed its final reading in the legislature.

Under the amendment, all weapons used by the gunman during two mass shootings on March 15, including military-style semiautomatic guns, will be banned. Parts, magazines and ammunition that can be used to convert a firearm into a semiautomatic will also be banned.

Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recounted the moment she found out many of the weapons used in the incident -- New Zealand's worst-ever terror attack -- were legally bought and sold.

"I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country," she said.

The prime minister went on to say she could not face the surviving victims of the attack and tell them "hand on heart that our system and our laws allow these guns to be available and that is O.K. Because...it was not."

Accused shooter Brenton Tarrant held an entry-level "Class-A" gun license, which he used to make multiple online purchases of guns and ammunition.

Tarrant is alleged to have made illegal modifications, using high-capacity magazines, effectively turning the weapons into military-style semi-automatics.

The country's new gun laws follow an announcement earlier in the day by Police Minister Stuart Nash that outlines the framework for a gun buyback scheme.

Under the buyback, gun owners will be compensated for surrendering weapons banned under the newly amended laws.

The government initially estimated the buyback would cost up to NZ$200 million ($135 million) however as New Zealand does not require the vast majority of individual firearms to be registered, the exact number of banned weapons is unknown. As a result, the government can only estimate the total cost.

Tarrant has been charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder, and is due to next appear in court on June 14.

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'Ordinary white man'? Picture of New Zealand accused gunman emerges

A one-time gym trainer from rural Australia who became steeped in neo-fascist ideology during travels in Europe, Brenton Tarrant described himself as an "ordinary white man" -- until he became anything but ordinary.

The gunman behind the massacre of 49 people in two New Zealand mosques flashed a white power sign during a brief court appearance Saturday, but he was not on any terrorist watch-list and appeared to have no criminal history.

Tarrant, 28, grew up in the small town of Grafton in northern New South Wales, where he graduated high school before earning some fitness qualifications and going on to find work at a local gym in 2009.

The gym's owner, Tracey Gray, described him as a hard-working trainer but said he appeared to have been changed by his travels in Europe and Asia -- which social media posts suggested included trips as far afield as Pakistan and North Korea.

"I think something must have changed in him during the years he spent travelling overseas," Gray told national broadcaster ABC. 

"Somewhere along the lines, experiences or a group have got a hold of him," she said.

Gray's speculation was backed up by a rambling, hate-filled, manifesto Tarrant posted to social media ahead of the Christchurch killings.

In the 74-page screed, he says he first began considering an attack in April and May of 2017 while travelling in France and elsewhere in Western Europe.

He mentions being shocked at the "invasion" of French cities by immigrants and his "despair" at the French presidential vote that year which saw pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron defeat his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen.

In a brief biographical sketch included in his manifesto, Tarrant describes himself as "just a ordinary white man... born in Australia to a working class, low income family".

His childhood was "regular" and, he insisted, issue-free. He "barely" achieved a passing grade in school and had no interest in pursuing higher education.

According to media reports, his father died of cancer in 2010 and gym owner Gray said she believed he had a mother and sister still living in Grafton.

Tarrant left the gym in 2011 and his travels, he says, were funded by money he made investing in Bitconnect -- an open source cryptocurrency that collapsed in early 2018 amid charges it was a glorified Ponzi scheme.

Two modified semi-automatic weapons -- reportedly AR-15s -- two shotguns and a lever-action gun were used in Friday's deadly rampage, and photos of the weaponry with distinctive writing on them were posted on social media days before.

Scrawled in English and several Eastern European languages were the names of numerous historical military figures -- many of them Europeans involved in fighting the Ottoman forces in the 15th and 16th centuries. A few took part in the Crusades, centuries earlier.

Ankara on Friday said it was investigating Tarrant's multiple visits to Turkey, and who he might have met while he was there.

The Bulgarian government has also said it was looking into Tarrant, who apparently visited the country late last year, as well as having earlier travelled to other parts of the Balkans -- including Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Tarrant's manifesto said he took "inspiration" from other right-wing extremists including racist Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011 motivated by his hatred of multiculturalism.

Tarrant described Oswald Mosley, a notorious British fascist leader and anti-Semite from the 1930s, as "the person from history closest to my own beliefs".

source: news.abs-cbn.com

UK police probe Manchester knifings as 'terrorist' attack

MANCHESTER - A British police probe into a triple stabbing at a Manchester railway station on New Year's Eve which injured 3 people is now being treated as "a terrorist investigation", the city's top officer said on Tuesday.

Counter-terrorism police have arrested a 25-year-old man who remains in custody, and are searching an address where he recently lived in the northwestern English city, Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said.

The suspect reportedly shouted "Allah" during what Hopkins called a "horrific attack" on three people, including a police officer, at Manchester Victoria station on Monday evening.

A man and a woman, both in their 50s, are still being treated in hospital after sustaining "serious" injuries, while the officer was stabbed in the shoulder, Hopkins added.

"We are treating this as a terrorist investigation which is being led by counter-terrorism officers with support from Greater Manchester police," he told a briefing.

"They were working through the night to piece together the details of what happened and to identify the man who was arrested."

Hopkins said counter-terrorism officers were searching an address near the city center "which is believed to be where the man had most recently been living".

Prime Minister Theresa May thanked emergency services for their "courageous response" in swiftly tackling the suspect.

She wrote on Twitter: "My thoughts are with those who were injured in the suspected terrorist attack in Manchester last night."

'PURE FEAR' 

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which happened at around 8:50 pm when many revelers in the city would have been enjoying New Year's Eve celebrations.

Witness Sam Clack, 38, a BBC radio producer, said the suspect shouted "Allah" before and during the attack.

He also quoted the perpetrator as saying: "As long as you keep bombing other countries, this sort of shit is going to keep happening."

The witness added he heard the "most blood-curdling scream" and looked down the platform to see the attack unfolding.

"He came towards me," he added. "I looked down and saw he had a kitchen knife with a black handle with a good 12 inch (30-centimeter) blade.

"It was just fear, pure fear."

Clack said police used a stun gun and pepper spray before "six or seven" officers jumped on the man.

Video footage of the incident shows him being overpowered by the officers.

The police said he was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and officers had recovered two knives from the scene.

The woman suffered injuries to her face and abdomen and the man was wounded in the abdomen, while a British Transport Police officer sustained a stab wound to the shoulder.

Their injuries were described as serious but not life-threatening.

'DREADFUL' 

The city's New Year celebrations went ahead in Albert Square despite the incident, with a firework display taking place as planned, though increased security was brought in.

British Transport Police said Tuesday its officers would be "highly visible through the national rail network".

Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham paid tribute to the emergency services' response.

He added the "vile attack" had "all the hallmarks... of an isolated incident".

Manchester police Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson said they were still trying to establish whether the suspect is a British national and how he came to be at the station.

"We are obviously considering his mental health given how frenzied the attack was, its random nature," he added. 

"There is wide reporting... about what the attacker allegedly said during the incident.

"However it's really important to stress we are retaining an open mind in relation to the motivation for this attack."

Police said investigators were considering its closeness to the Manchester Arena, where a suicide bomber struck in May 2017, as potentially significant.

The attack at a concert by the US singer Ariana Grande killed 22 people and wounded 139.

The perpetrator, Salman Abedi, 22, was born and raised in Manchester.

"That the incident happened so close to the scene of the terrorist attack on May 22, 2017 makes it even more dreadful," chief constable Hopkins said.

"Our work will continue to ensure we get to the full facts of what happened and why it took place."

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