Terrorism Suspected In Car-And-Knife Attack At Ohio State

[Does this mean we're start hearing about a need to ban knives and cars?]


A Somali-born Ohio State University student plowed his car into a group of pedestrians on campus and then got out and began stabbing people with a butcher knife Monday before he was shot to death by a police officer. Police said they were investigating whether it was a terrorist attack.

Eleven people were hurt, one critically.

The attacker was identified as Abdul Razak Ali Artan. He was born in Somalia and was a legal permanent U.S. resident, according to a U.S. official who wasn't authorized to discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The FBI joined the investigation.

The details emerged after a morning of conflicting reports and confusion, created in part by a series of tweets from the university warning there was an "active shooter" on campus and students should "Run Hide Fight." The warning was prompted by what turned out to be police gunfire.

Ohio State University police Chief Craig Stone said the assailant deliberately drove his small Honda over a curb outside an engineering classroom building and then began knifing people. A campus officer nearby because of a gas leak arrived on the scene and shot the driver in less than a minute, Stone said.
Angshuman Kapil, a graduate student, was outside Watts Hall when the car barreled onto the sidewalk.
"It just hit everybody who was in front," he said. "After that everybody was shouting, 'Run! Run! Run!'"
Student Martin Schneider said he heard the car's engine revving.

"I thought it was an accident initially until I saw the guy come out with a knife," Schneider said, adding the man didn't say anything when he got out.

Most of the injured were hurt by the car, and at least two were stabbed. One had a fractured skull.
Columbus police Chief Kim Jacobs, asked whether authorities were considering the possibility it was a terrorist act, said: "I think we have to consider that it is."

Republican Vice President-elect Mike Pence called the episode "a tragic attack" and said "our prayers are with them all."

U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the bloodshed "bears all of the hallmarks of a terror attack carried out by someone who may have been self-radicalized."





Was The Ohio State Attack Terrorism? Suspect Was Abdul Artan



Ohio law enforcement officials confirmed to NBC News Monday afternoon that Artan — an 18-year-old freshman at OSU — was the man who plowed a car into a crowd of people on campus and subsequently attacked passers-by with a butcher’s knife.

Authorities had previously confirmed that the suspect was a Somali refugee, legally residing in Ohio.
Artan fled Somalia with his family in 2007 before landing in Pakistan.
He moved to the United States in 2014, where he was granted legal, permanent status.
It should be noted that Ohio State’s online directory only lists one student with the name, Abdul Artan.
Ohio State Jihad Attacker Named Abdul Razak Ali Artan, Vehicle Used in Attack Belonged to Mohammad Ali https://t.co/sJq7byjKyPhttp://pic.twitter.com/tuAAUCPRE2


Furthermore, “The Lantern” — OSU’s campus newspaper — ran an interview with Artan just a few months ago, in which he criticized the school for not having Muslim prayer rooms on campus.

Artan’s motive is not yet known, yet authorities maintain that the attack was “done on purpose” and are treating the incident as a possible terrorist act.





ISIS Calls for Random Knife Attacks in Alleys, Forests, Beaches, 'Quiet Neighborhoods'



A new magazine issued by the Islamic State advises lone jihadists to get over any squeamishness about using knives and embrace sharp objects as "widely available" weapons of jihad in nighttime stabbing campaigns.

ISIS' Al-Hayat Media Center issued the second issue of its magazine Rumiyah, meaning Rome, in English, Turkish, German, French, Indonesian, Russian, Arabic and Uyghur. The design of the magazine is more simple than ISIS' English-language Dabiq. It's also much shorter: 38 pages compared to the 82 pages in the last issue of Dabiq.


In the first issue of Rumiyah, which debuted a month ago, jihadists were advised to target teens playing sports after school or even flower sellers hawking blooms on the street.

In the new PDF issue distributed widely via social media and Google Drive, an article on terror tactics assures would-be jihadists that "one need not be a military expert or a martial arts master, or even own a gun or rifle in order to carry out a massacre or to kill and injure several disbelievers and terrorize an entire nation."


A footnote in the article states that ISIS won't be using the term "lone wolf," but "just terror operations" -- "just" as an adjective for "justice." Al-Qaeda calls lone operations "open-source jihad."


Hinting that the article is one in a forthcoming series about terror tactics, ISIS focused on the benefits of knives to help potential terrorists with the "ocean of thoughts" that "might pour into one’s mind" when considering an attack.


"Many people are often squeamish of the thought of plunging a sharp object into another person’s flesh. It is a discomfort caused by the untamed, inherent dislike for pain and death, especially after 'modernization' distanced males from partaking in the slaughtering of livestock for food and the striking of the enemy in war," the unbylined article states. "However, any such squirms and discomforts are never an excuse for abandoning jihad."
ISIS suggested a "campaign of knife attacks" in which the attacker "could dispose of his weapon after each use, finding no difficulty in acquiring another one."

"It is explicitly advised not to use kitchen knives, as their basic structure is not designed to handle the kind of vigorous application used for assassinations and slaughter," the article states, further advising "to avoid troublesome knives, those that can cause harm to the user because of poor manufacturing."








A new Islamic State video has issued a graphic propaganda tutorial to Muslims to murder "disbelievers" in Britain, the U.S. and France. 
The video - "Taking revenge for the Muslims" - contains instructions on how to kill while outlining footage of earlier terrorist attacks in countries including Germany, France, Finland and Russia.
One terrorist wearing a balaclava to hide his face giving the instructions calls on Muslims in France to kill in the name of Allah.

"So kill them," he says.


The video centers on “revenge” and suggests that the simplest weapons for ISIS sympathizers to use abroad is either a knife or an improvised explosive device (IED).
The terrorist teaches how to fill a man with a knife, slicing his throat and wrist.