There were apparently three terrorist attacks today, one in France, one in Tunisia, and one in Kuwait, and according to Fox News they may all be ISIS connected.
Here are details on the first attack in France where at least one person was beheaded:
REUTERS – A decapitated body covered in Arabic writing was found at a U.S. gas company in southeast France on Friday, police sources and French media said, after an assailant rammed a car into the premises, triggering an explosion.
The attacker survived the blast and was arrested. The identity of the beheaded victim was not clear but French media said it was a manager of a local transport company, on the site for a delivery.
Police sources earlier said the decapitated body was found at the site, along with a flag bearing Islamist inscriptions.
Local newspaper Le Dauphine said the head covered in Arabic writing was found on a fence.
Speaking from a European Union summit in Brussels, French President Francois Hollande described it as a terrorist attack and said all measures would be taken to stop any future strikes on a country still reeling from Islamist assaults in January.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said one suspect, named as Yassin Sahli, had been arrested, and police were holding other suspected accomplices. He said Sahli did not have a criminal record but had been under surveillance from 2006 to 2008 on suspicion of having become radicalized.
“Two individuals deliberately rammed a car into the gas containers to trigger an explosion,” a police source said of the attack in an industrial zone by the town of Saint-Quentin Fallavier, 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Lyon.
However the number of assailants was thrown into doubt, with Hollande saying it could have been either one or two.
French media said Sahli was a 35-year-old professional driver who lived in the Lyon suburbs. There was no official confirmation of that.
It was not known whether the victim, so far the only known fatality in the incident that also injured two people, was decapitated before or after the car smashed into the building, or whether the victim had been on site at the time of the attack, or killed elsewhere.
Here are the details on the second attack in Tunisia where at least 27 people were killed at a beach resort:
REUTERS – At least 27 people, including foreign tourists, were killed when at least one gunman opened fire on a Tunisian beachside hotel in the popular resort of Sousse on Friday, an interior ministry spokesman said.
Police were still clearing the area around the Imperial Marhaba hotel and the body of one gunman lay at the scene with a Kalashnikov assault rifle after he was shot in an exchange of gunfire, a security source at the scene said.
It was the second major attack in the North African country this year, and took place during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
“One attacker opened fire with a Kalashnikov on tourists and Tunisians on the beach of the hotel,” said a hotel worker at the site. “It was just one attacker. He was a young guy dressed in shorts like he was a tourist himself.”
Tunisia, which has been hailed as a model of democratic transition since its 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprising, is one of the most secular countries in the Arab world. Its beach resorts and nightclubs on the Mediterranean are popular with European visitors.
No one immediately claimed the attack. But Islamist jihadists have attacked North African tourist sites before, seeing them as legitimate targets because of their open Western lifestyles and tolerance of alcohol.
Six other people were wounded, the ministry spokesman said.
Here are the details of the attack in Kuwait where at least 10 were killed in a mosque suicide bombing:
REUTERS – A suicide bomber blew himself up at a packed Shi’ite Muslim mosque in Kuwait city during Friday prayers, killing more than ten people, the governor of Kuwait City said.
The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on social media and said it targeted a “temple of the rejectionists” – a term it usually uses to refer to Shi’ite Muslims, whom it regards as heretics.
It was the first suicide bombing attack on a Shi’ite mosque in the small Gulf Arab oil exporter, where Sunnis and Shi’ites live side by side with little apparent friction.
Islamic State on Tuesday urged its followers to step up attacks during the Ramadan fasting month against Christians, Shi’ites and Sunni Muslims fighting with a U.S.-led coalition against the ultra-radical group.
Kuwaiti parliament member Khalil al-Salih said worshippers were kneeling in prayer when a suicide bomber walked into the Imam al-Sadeq Mosque side and blew himself up, destroying walls and the ceiling.
“It was obvious from the suicide bomber’s body that he was young. He walked into the prayer hall during sujood (kneeling in prayer), he looked …in his 20s, I saw him with my own eyes,” he told Reuters by telephone.
“The explosion was really hard. The ceiling and wall got destroyed,” he said, adding that more than 2,000 people from the Shi’ite Ja’afari sect were praying at the mosque.
UPDATE: More on the attack in Kuwait:
MORE: At least 16 dead, 179 wounded in explosion at Kuwaiti mosque, paremdic says: http://t.co/bRUOahBjkw
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 26, 2015
A Kuwaiti paramedic and a human rights activist say that at least 16 people have been killed and dozens have been wounded in an attack on a Shiite mosque.
The extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the explosion at the Imam Sadiq Mosque in Kuwait City during midday prayers Friday.
Paramedic Abdelrahman al-Yusef says most of the victims were men or boys who were at the mosque when the bombing took place.
He says the medics have treated at least 179 people.
Basel al-Fadli from the Kuwait Watch Organization says he recorded 16 deaths, but that several people are still missing.