ISIS-K brings terror to European football: How ruthless Afghan off-shoot of ... trends now

The same branch of Islamic State that US intelligence believes carried out last month's deadly terror attack in Moscow is likely behind today's threat made by ISIS against major cities hosting this week's Champions League quarter finals.

The Al Azaim Foundation, a media channel responsible for disseminating messages from the ISIS-K affiliate of the notorious terror group, shared a post threatening an attack on all four stadiums playing host to the fixtures in major European capitals.

This includes the Emirates Stadium in London - which will host Arsenal v Bayern Munich, and the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid - where Manchester City will take on Real Madrid, both tonight.

The post - captioned 'kill them all' - also named the Parc des Princes in Paris and the Metropolitano - also in Madrid - which are both hosting matches tomorrow. 

The threat comes less than three weeks after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack inside Russia in 20 years, which saw gunmen open fire with automatic weapons at a concert hall near Moscow, killing at least 144 people.

US intelligence sources have said Islamic State's Khorasan Province regional branch (also known as ISIS-K) was behind the deadly attack, which also saw more than 500 people injured and parts of the venue collapse due to incendiary devices.

It suggests that the group is now setting its sights further west, calling on its supporters to terrorist Europe, with alarm bells ringing among officials.

The brutal massacre in Moscow put Europe back on terror alert, with France's terror warning system, Vigipirate, being pushed to its highest readiness level.

The group is mostly active in South-Central Asia, primarily Afghanistan and Pakistan, with its long-term goal being to supplant governments there in order to establish an Islamic caliphate across the region, as ISIS did in Iraq and Syria almost a decade ago.

At its peak in 2015, the self-proclaimed Islamic Sate Caliphate ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people on whom it enforced an extremist interpretation of Islamic Law, while boasting a fighting force of 30,000.

However, ISIS was largely defeated in the Middle East by 2019 at the hands of America, Iraqi and Kurdish forces, who pushed it out of the territories it controlled.

The defeat of the Caliphate has forced ISIS affiliates like ISIS-K to resort to insurgency tactics, although it still maintains significant presence in Africa.

Since then, the group - specifically ISIS-K - now appears to be reemerging as a serious terror threat to the West while also carrying out several local attacks against Shia Muslims, politicians and government employees.

World leaders - including France's Emmanuel Macron - have recently sounded the alarm over the danger posed by ISIS - which carried out several horrific attacks on major European cities in the 2010s - and specifically ISIS-K.

In the wake of the Moscow attack, Macron held an emergency meeting to discuss the already tense security situation in France, which is also preparing to host the 2024 Olympic Games.

He revealed that ISIS-K has 'attempted several times to hit France.'

Speaking in October last year, the French leader said: 'All European states are vulnerable... there is a return of this Islamist  terrorism.

'We all have a vulnerability. It's what comes with being a democracy, a rule-of-law state where there are individuals who can decide at a given moment to commit the worst acts,' Macron told reporters during a visit to the Albanian capital Tirana.

His comments came just hours after Belgian police shot dead a suspected gunman following an intensive manhunt for an ISIS fanatic who killed two Swedish football fans in Brussels with an automatic rifle.

Speaking last month before the attack in Moscow, a senior US general also warned during an appearance before a Senate committee that ISIS-K would have the capacity to attack US citizens within six months.

General Michael Kurilla, head of US Central Command, told Congress that 'at least hundreds of thousands' of US citizens could be vulnerable to an attack by ISIS-K, which has the 'ultimate goal to strike on the American homeland'.

In addition to the Moscow attack on March 22, the US also believes ISIS-K was behind two explosions in Iran in January that killed nearly 100 people and wounded scores at a memorial marking the fourth anniversary of the assassination of top commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020 by an American drone.

Iran arrested 35 people in January, including a commander of Islamic State's Afghanistan-based branch ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), who it said were linked to the twin bombings on January 3 in the southeastern city of Kerman. 

The group also claimed responsibility for the Kabul airport attack during the US evacuation in August 2021 which killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 US soldiers. It continued launching attacks throughout 2022, including on mosques and schools.

ISIS-K's recent emergence has been put down - at least in part - to the group's 29-year-old leader Sanaullah Ghafari, who has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network.