The Isis militant group has released a new video threatening to launch attacks in Russia “very soon”.
Issued by the group’s foreign language propaganda wing, the al-Hayat Media Centre, the video combined footage of the Charlie Hebdo shootings and graphic depictions of executions with a threat that “soon, very soon, the blood will spill like an ocean”.
It was issued on Thursday afternoon in an apparent bid to distract international attention from the significant losses it was suffering on the battlefield in Iraq.
Subtitles on the video described Russia as “dying”.
“The kafir throats will tremble from the knives. The Kremlin will be ours,” it said.
Isis has emerged as the prime suspect in the bombing of a Russian passenger airliner which crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on 31 October, killing all 224 people on board.
And Russian officials also suspect Isis was planning to bomb the village of Kantyshevo, south-west Russia, in a plot which was uncovered last week by special forces.
Isis has previously called for attacks on Russia and the US in response to coalition air strikes on its fighters in Syria and Iraq.
On Wednesday night, US-led coalition fighter jets provided air support to around 7,500 Kurdish and Yazidi fighters launching a major offensive to retake the key town of Sinjar.
As of Thursday afternoon, Kurdish military officials said they had captured three villages outside the town and seized portions of Highway 47, cutting off a major supply route between Isis’s strongholds of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
“The ground assault began in the early morning hours of Nov. 12, when peshmerga units successfully established blocking positions along Highway 47 and began clearing Sinjar,” said the coalition in a statement.
“The peshmerga will continue operations to re-establish government control over key portions of the areas.”
