Germans Increasingly Carrying Out IS Suicide Attacks

Up to nine Germans have carried out suicide bombings for the "Islamic State" terror group this year, a German research team reports. Berlin is weighing its response amid fears that the number could continue to grow.

The German government is alarmed about a growing number of its citizens carrying out suicide bombings on behalf of the "Islamic State" (IS) in Iraq and Syria, reports a research team including journalists from the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" newspaper as well as German broadcasters NDR and WDR. The team says it could confirm five separate attacks by Germans and is currently looking into a further three to four incidents.



Almost all of the attacks were carried out this year in Iraq - primarily in the northern Kurdish region and Baghdad, claims the team in its report published on Wednesday. It further cites information from Western intelligence agencies that the number of suicide strikes carried out by Europeans has quadrupled since March, attributing the Islamist militia's increased deployment of Westerners in part to propaganda purposes.



"We don't want death being sent from Germany to Iraq. Exporting terror is unconscionable and must be stopped," said German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" in response.



Putting faces to deeds



Signs point to one of the suicide bombers being 21-year-old Ahmet C. from the western German town of Ennepetal, the report adds, citing video analysis, German intelligence sources and interviews with those close to the youth whose family has Turkish roots. Within the last year, Ahmet C. began forging ties with Germany's Salafist scene before suddenly leaving for Turkey in early June and joining the "Islamic State."



On July 19, 2014, an individual detonated a vehicle loaded with explosives at a security checkpoint in Baghdad, killing 54 people, including many children in a school bus. Shortly thereafter, Ahmet's family received a brief telephone call from an unidentified speaker telling them their son had died in Iraq. At the time, Iraqi media cited an IS declaration that Abu Al-Kaakaa al-Almani carried out the act of "martyrdom." Al-Almani translates to "the German."



The German media reports about Ahmet C. follow the opening of a widely covered court case earlier this week involving a 20-year-old German man accused of having travelled to Syria in July 2013 to join the IS terror group.



Countermeasures



The German government has already banned the "Islamic State" group at home in an effort to combat returnees associated with the group, following reports that an estimated 400 German nationals and residents have joined the militant group in Syria and Iraq. Now, the question for security officials is how to prevent the outflow of German jihadists and sympathizers in the first place.



That agenda is reflected in the interior minister's comments about putting a stop to the export of terror, which were echoed by the chief official for domestic security in Ahmet C.'s home state of North-Rhine Westphalia.



"We're looking at the security situation in Germany, but we also have a responsibility toward the people who live in Syria and Iraq," commented Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which deals with domestic security at the federal level.