ISIS urge lone fanatics to be ‘the expected wolf’ and threaten plane attacks in chilling online propaganda
- Online propaganda poster call for ISIS supporters to launch attacks
- Another poster appears to urge jihadists to strike against airtravel
- It comes as monitors observe calls for an escalation of ‘online jihad’
ISIS supporters are being urged to ‘be the expected wolf’ and launch lone attacks on Western targets, monitoring groups claim.
Propaganda posters published by ISIS-linked media organisations appear to encourage attacks, including one depicting a man walking through an airport dragging a suitcase with the terror group’s logo on.
Another shows a jihadist fighter holding the black-and-white flag of ISIS as he looks out over a demolished cityscape with the caption: ‘You see it far away and we see it nearby.’
Scare tactics: Poster published by ISIS-supporting media show a man waking through an airport dragging an ISIS suitcase behind him
Supporters of the Islamist terror network have been known to release similar posters in the past, often using images of major Western cities such as New York and London, as part of their scare tactics.
They are often shared on encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, to ‘inspire’ extremists to carry out terror attacks.
This follows a report from last week that desperate ISIS-linked media groups are trying to push for ‘online jihad’ as the terrorists are now all but extinguished in Syria and Iraq.
The Al-Haq Foundation posted a poster of a hooded figure using a laptop alongside the logos of social networks such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, to encourage posting terror-supporting content online, PJ Media reports.
This poster appears to try to ‘inspire’ ISIS fighters to launch lone wolf attacks
Another shows a jihadist fighter holding the black-and-white flag of ISIS as he looks out over a demolished cityscape with the caption: ‘You see it far away and we see it nearby’
As ISIS’s loss of its final territory in Syria is imminent, the future of the jihadist group is unclear.
A UN report published last month claimed ISIS has a secret war chest of up to $300 million (£230 million) which could be used to sustain its operations and fund new attacks on the West.
The terror group is assessed to have ‘bulk-stored’ some of the money in its stronghold area, while the rest has been smuggled abroad or invested in legitimate businesses.