December 4, 2014 -- Updated 1642 GMT (0042 HKT)
An Emirati woman arrested on suspicion of fatally stabbing a U.S.
teacher in a bathroom at a UAE mall is also accused of placing a
handmade bomb in front of a U.S. doctor's house. FULL STORY
|
U.S. WOMAN KILLED
UAE woman arrested in U.S. teacher's mall restroom stabbing
December 4, 2014 -- Updated 1638 GMT (0038 HKT)
U.S. woman killed in UAE restroom
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Emirati woman arrested on suspicion of killing U.S. woman in mall bathroom
- NEW: Woman also accused of planting bomb near U.S. doctor's house in UAE
- American woman was stabbed in the women's restroom at high-end mall, police say
- The 47-year-old victim was a schoolteacher and mother of 11-year-old twins, police say
Police arrested the woman, identified only as in 30s and a UAE national, Interior Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan said.
More details about the arrest weren't immediately available.
Police said a veiled
woman stabbed American schoolteacher Ibolya Ryan, 47, during a fight in a
restroom at the high-end Boutik Mall on Reem Island on Monday.
The alleged attacker was
fully covered, donning an abaya -- a black, full-length gown
traditionally worn by Emirati women -- black gloves, a face cover and a
hijab, or head scarf, police said. She fled the mall after the attack.
Police believe Ryan, who was married with 11-year-old twins, did not know the attacker, Al Nahyan said.
Later Monday, the suspect
placed a primitive bomb in front of a house where an American Muslim
doctor lives, said Al Nahyan, adding that authorities had video of the
event.
The doctor's son saw the object and called police, Al Nahyan said. Police defused the device.
Investigators believe
that the attacker wanted to create chaos and spread fear, Al Nahyan
said. He didn't discuss possible motives beyond that.
Al Nahyan didn't say what led police to identify and arrest the suspect.
Surveillance video
released by police shows the moments before and after the mall stabbing.
A veiled figure that police identified as the attacker walks calmly in
through a parking lot entrance, speaking to security guards, picking up a
paper and disappearing around the corner out of sight.
The video later shows the suspect running to an elevator and then leaving the mall through the same parking lot doors.
The U.S. Embassy in Abu
Dhabi issued a statement, back in October, warning U.S. citizens of an
anonymous Internet post that encouraged attacks against teachers at
American and other international schools.
The embassy was unaware
of any specific, credible threat at that time, but called on citizens to
be vigilant about their personal security.
Reem Island is a newly developed area of Abu Dhabi where many Western expatriates live.
CNN's Nicola Goulding reported from Abu
Dhabi and Jason Hanna wrote in Atlanta. CNN's Laura Smith-Spark
contributed to this report.
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No food aid for Syrian refugees
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Video
West's stark choice: Al-Assad or ISIS
U.S. options in Syria shrivel as Islamists and Assad regime make gains
December 4, 2014 -- Updated 1641 GMT (0041 HKT)
A man drives his motorcycle
through a puddle in Aleppo, Syria, on Wednesday, November 26. The United
Nations estimates more than 190,000 people have been killed in Syria
since an uprising in March 2011 spiraled into civil war.
HIDE CAPTION
Syrian civil war in 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Hardline Salafist groups and especially al Qaeda's affiliate on offensive in Syria
- Moderates suffer from poor morale, lack of resources, allowing Assad regime, extremists to prosper
- Making things still worse, there appears to be at least truce between al Nusra and ISIS
- West has stark choice -- Bashar al-Assad or ISIS and other jihadist groups
This is a growing
headache for the Obama administration, which is trying to identify,
train and "stand up" moderate rebel factions to take on the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS.) Washington has announced a $500 million
program to train 5,000 fighters over one year.
But it is yet to begin
and some of these groups are now in retreat or on the verge of
extinction. Those that aren't are wary of being identified as
"Washington's guys" because of the administration's focus on degrading
ISIS but not going after Syrian government forces.
Analysts say moderate
groups are caught between a rock and a hard place -- pilloried by
radical factions for taking western weapons but failing to get enough of
them (or quickly enough) to become serious players. Noah Bonsey, of the
International Crisis Group, writes in Foreign Policy:
Fighting by the fallen in Kobani
CNN crosses into ISIS wreckage
Syria's youngest refugees
"For a rebel commander
seeking to convince his fighters that cooperation with Washington is in
the rebellion's best interest, American strikes that ignore the Assad
regime while hitting [Islamist rebels in] Ahrar al-Sham are extremely
difficult to explain."
Moderate groups also suffer from poor morale and a lack of resources. All in all, says Kimberly Kagan,
President of the Institute for the Study of War, "the forces that the
U.S. has nominally been backing have suffered losses at the hands of the
Islamic State, Jabhat al Nusra [al Qaeda's Syrian franchise], and the
regime." The current trajectory, she says, means "the moderate
opposition remains marginal and incapable of shaping the battlefield in
any material way."
Bonsey told CNN that
coalition air-strikes against ISIS had allowed President Bashar al-Assad
to refocus on hitting mainstream rebels, and the regime had made gains
around Hama and Aleppo. Combined with al Nusra's advances in Idlib and
the threat of a renewed offensive by ISIS, moderate groups were now in
danger of a rapid decline.
Kristen Gillespie,
founder of the website Syria Direct, agrees: "American policy freed up
the regime to step up bombings of its own civilians, which we are seeing
in areas across Syria such as Jobar, Hama and Homs."
Al Nusra appears to have
benefited from the limited strikes against its subsidiary, the Khorasan
Group, which the U.S. alleges is planning attacks on the West. Observers
say the strikes, and reports of civilian casualties, have gained the
group sympathy and support.
Making things still
worse, there appears to be at least a truce between al Nusra and ISIS,
allowing each to focus on other enemies, whether moderate groups, the
regime or the Kurds, and consolidate control over their respective
strongholds. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper,
last month spoke of "tactical accommodations" between the two groups.
Other sources say smaller Salafist groups that share the jihadist
outlook of al Nusra and ISIS have helped broker local agreements.
An al Nusra spokesman,
Abu Azzam al Ansari, told Syria Direct last month that al Nusra is
looking for a ceasefire, though not a larger merger with ISIS, because
it wants to focus on fighting "just the Alawites [regime.]"
Such a truce may allow
al Nusra free rein in the north-west of Syria, while ISIS focuses on its
heartland in the north-east. In the past month it has overwhelmed
forces of the Syrian Revolutionaries' Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazm in
Idlib -- both supported by the US and Saudi Arabia. The SRF had been
seen as a potential U.S. ally since it helped expel ISIS fighters from
the region in January. Dozens of Harakat Hazm fighters defected to al
Nusra, according to local activists.
Al Nusra fighters are
within a few kilometers of border crossings into Turkey -- a source of
revenue and resupply. Local activists and analysts also see al Nusra
developing a closer relationship with the most powerful group within the
Islamic Front: Ahrar al Sham. Gillespie says Ahrar is popular in Idlib
as many of its members are from the province. "They have the popularity,
Nusra has more of the military might," she says. Together, "they appear
to be a formidable foe for anyone looking to take over Idlib."
Al Nusra's propaganda machine has showcased the social services it is providing
and its convoys parading through Idlib. To some analysts, Al Nusra
appears to be emulating ISIS in building its own emirate in northern
Syria. In a recording leaked in July, al Nusra's leader Abu Muhammad al
Julani was heard saying the time had come to establish "an Islamic
emirate in the Levant." Bonsey says it has "withdrawn assets from key
fronts with the regime and shifted them to establish unilateral control
of other areas."
Al Nusra has begun
implementing Sharia law and building local government, releasing images
of its Da'wah (Islamic Preaching) offices in the town of Sarmada and
elsewhere. But Kristen Gillespie says "they are moving slowly, because
people still fear Nusra is a version of ISIS. Nusra is launching
campaigns to create gardens, pick up trash and other measures that
improve people's quality of life."
Even so, other factions are apprehensive that it's on the way to emulating ISIS and building its own caliphate, says Bonsey.
Stark choice
In neighboring Aleppo
province, an area the Assad regime has fought hard to control, the
battlefield is even more complex. After Damascus, the city of Aleppo
remains the most important theater for both the regime and its
opponents. Western reporters who have managed to get into Aleppo say the
Islamic Front -- an umbrella group of Islamist militia -- is in control
of rebel-held neighborhoods, while al Nusra dominates in the
countryside to the north.
Al Nusra and its allies
are engaged in a bitter battle against the regime and fighters of the
Lebanese militia Hezbollah for control of two nearby towns -- Zahra and
Nubul -- inhabited largely by pro-regime Shia. Videos and photographs
uploaded in recent days suggest a sustained assault against Zahra and
Nubul: in one instance al Nusra appears to have used a captured armored
troop-carrier as a massive suicide bomb. Success against the regime in
these towns would secure a vital supply route for rebels clinging on in
Aleppo in the face of aerial and artillery bombardment, but for now the
towns' defenders are holding out.
Al Nusra is launching campaigns to create gardens, pick up trash and other measures that improve people's quality of life.
Kristen Gillespie
Kristen Gillespie
Al Nusra is clearly
taking territory while it can, perhaps wary of ISIS suddenly turning on
it (as it did in August) or the emergence of better-equipped groups
supported by the West. As the regime and rebels fight to a standstill
around Aleppo, ISIS waits in the wings -- looking for an opportunity to
take further territory (if not the city itself) from exhausted
combatants.
ISIS holds rural areas
near the town of Marea, 20 miles north of Aleppo. Among the groups lined
up against it are fighters of the Jaish al Mujahideen, a mainstream
outfit that has U.S. support and claims to have about 6,000 fighters.
But one of the group's commanders, Abdulaziz, told Reuters
this week that only 50 men have so far received training in a
CIA-sponsored program. They would be hard-pressed to resist a renewed
ISIS assault in the area.
Ultimately, says Noah
Bonsey of the International Crisis Group, "to reverse jihadist gains you
need to strengthen moderate groups, and get as many of them as possible
on the same page."
The creation last week
of the new Revolutionary Command Council, which includes a wide spectrum
of rebel groups, could be significant -- if it survives, and so long as
it doesn't become just a vehicle for Salafist factions such as Ahrar al
Sham. So far, says Bonsey, "the bottom line is that the pace and scale
of U.S. support is not sufficient to halt, let alone reverse the erosion
of moderate forces."
Most territory in Syria
is essentially shared by the "big three" -- ISIS, al Nusra and its
allies, and the regime. "The Americans have painted themselves into a
corner, left to work only with so-called moderates, who at this point
have mostly been kidnapped, killed, exiled or absorbed into Islamist
factions," says Gillespie.
That fits the Assad
regime's game plan. Kill off the mainstream groups and leave the West
with a stark choice -- Bashar al-Assad or ISIS and other jihadist groups
turning Syria into an Islamic state.
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