Islamic State tweeted of Paris attacks 72 hours before slaughter, suggesting woman was involved

ONCE dismissed as a ragtag bunch of marauding wannabes, the Paris atrocities have shown us how badly we underestimated IS, and now we’re paying the price.

Former Sydney teen Abdullah Elmir (L) and former Melbourne man Yusuf Yusuf (R) pose with an unidentified fighter in a photo posted to Facebook by "ginger jihadi" Elmir.

THE devastating Paris attacks show the world has vastly underestimated the brutality and reach of Islamic State, a force hellbent on a campaign that has no end in sight.

That is the sobering conclusion of leading terror experts who warn IS will stop at nothing to wreak havoc, destruction and death in its mission to establish a global caliphate.

It was only last year US President Barack Obama referred to the group as al-Qaeda’s “junior varsity team” in what now seems a laughable miscalculation.

From beheading Western hostages and burning prisoners alive in metal cages, to seizing territory and bringing down commercial aircraft, the world has watched Islamic State metastasise before our very eyes.

But the Paris attacks should finally force the world to see the terror group as a sophisticated organisation with the potential to hit targets well beyond Iraq and Syria, Intelligent Risks Group chief executive officer Neil Fergus says.

Mr Fergus said people had underestimated the capabilities of IS, which controls an area two thirds the size of Victoria, has millions of people under its rule and has already launched successful military campaigns.

“The reach of their activities are extensive,” he told news.com.au.

“This is a group who even al-Qaeda considered too fundamentalist.

“I’ve seen the speeches of [IS leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi they are full of brutality and callousness.”

Australian IS fighter Abdullah Elmir, the Sydney apprentice butcher dubbed the ‘Ginger Jihadi’, looked like a boy playing at war games when pictures first emerged. But Islamic State is a very real threat.

Mr Fergus said the added danger was that, with an estimated 25,000 foreign fighters and other terror groups such as Boko Haram swearing allegiance to Islamic State, its reach was far greater and more dangerous that most people realised.

He said the group would view Paris not as a lesson to the West, but as a success to be replicated time and time again.

“This group needs to be defeated,” he said.

Mr Fergus added that, if the West hadn’t made the catastrophic decision to invade Iraq in 2003, it wouldn’t have spawned al-Qaeda in Iraq and its breakaway group, IS.

Visiting research fellow at Australian National University, Dr Michael McKinley, said the world needed to sit up and take notice of the terror group, which was far from the ragtag bunch of misfits some had previously taken them for.

“This is a group who are ruthless and control territory,” he said.

“They have demonstrated they and groups who are aligned with them are capable of co-ordinated and sustained attacks over a period of weeks.

“These people are a very real and serious threat and the only way to stop them is to defeat them.

“It’s a terrifying problem and unless governments are prepared to rethink their strategies we will certainly be seeing more of this.”

Scott Atran, director of anthropology research at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, argues the biggest mistake the West has made is failing to understand IS in the first place. What is unfolding — from the refugee crisis to growing anti-Islamic sentiment — plays right into its hands.

“The greater the reaction against Muslims in Europe and the deeper the West becomes involved in military action in the Middle East, the happier ISIS leaders will be,” he wrote in a piece titled Mindless Terrorists? The Truth about ISIS is Much Worse, published in The Guardian.

“Because this is about the organisation’s key strategy: finding, creating and managing chaos.”

Mr Atran says Islamic State’s central mission has been misunderstood for too long.

“Simply treating ISIS as a form of ‘terrorism’ or ‘violent extremism’ masks the menace. Merely dismissing it as ‘nihilistic’ reflects a wilful and dangerous avoidance of trying to comprehend, and deal with, its profoundly alluring moral mission to change and save the world.

“The first step to combating ISIS is to understand it. We have yet to do so. That failure costs us dear.”

RED FLAG MISSED?

The warnings come after four credible ISIS-linked social media accounts began sharing messages 72 hours before the Paris attacks, including images of weapons, the Eiffel Tower, as well as blessings for the attackers’ mission, Fox News has learned.

A military intelligence source says the social media traffic is now seen as evidence the three teams had gone operational.

The translations include “God bless you in your mission” and “Support the deployment,” as well as a reference to our “sister,” suggesting an operative, or member of the support team was a woman.

ISIS claims of responsibility for the Paris massacre, in which 129 people were slaughtered in a co-ordinated series of bomb blasts and mass shootings, are being reviewed by US intelligence analysts, with a focus on the English-language version, which is delivered in American-accented English.

It is now clear the plot included a rollout of ISIS propaganda, which was prepared in advance, including threats directed toward the Russian people, Rome, London and Washington DC.

Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey has told field offices across the country to intensify surveillance on ISIS suspects, hoping to prevent violence in the US.

Before the attack, Mr Comey confirmed there were 900 active ISIS investigations, spread across all 50 states.

There is a growing body of evidence that the attack was premeditated, and the terrorists were vetted by ISIS in Syria. An anti-ISIS group told the Sunday Telegraph that two fighters were sent in March, and two more in May for an operation in France. In August, a French national who was arrested, returning from Syria, mentioned instructions to attack a concert hall.

MORE WARNINGS:

Meanwhile, it has been revealed senior Iraqi intelligence officials warned coalition countries of imminent assaults by the Islamic State group just one day before the Paris attacks.

Iraqi intelligence sent a dispatch saying the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had ordered an attack on coalition countries fighting against them in Iraq and Syria, as well as on Iran and Russia, “through bombings or assassinations or hostage taking in the coming days.”

The dispatch said the Iraqis had no specific details on when or where the attack would take place, and a senior French security official told the AP that French intelligence gets this kind of communication “all the time” and “every day.”

However, six senior Iraqi officials corroborated the information in the dispatch, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, and four of these intelligence officials said they also warned France specifically of a potential attack. Two officials told Associated Press that France was warned beforehand of details that French authorities have yet to make public.

Among them: that the Paris attacks appear to have been planned in Raqqa, Syria — the Islamic State’s de facto capital — where the attackers were trained specifically for this operation and with the intention of sending them to France.

The officials also said a sleeper cell in France then met with the attackers after their training and helped them to execute the plan.

There were 24 people involved in the operation, they said: 19 attackers and five others in charge of logistics and planning.

The officials all spoke anonymously because they are not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on Saturday for the gun and bomb attacks on a stadium, a concert hall and Paris cafes that also wounded 350 people, 99 of them seriously. Seven of the attackers blew themselves up. Police have been searching intensively for accomplices.

Iraq’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, also told journalists in Vienna on Sunday that Iraqi intelligence agencies had obtained information that some countries would be targeted, including France, the United States and Iran, and had shared the intelligence with those countries.

Officials in the French presidential palace would not comment, and U.S. officials didn’t immediately comment when contacted by the Associated Press.

Every night, the head of French counterintelligence goes to bed asking ‘why not today?’ the French security official said.

— With AP

This article originally appeared on FoxNews