ISIS

A leading ISIS terrorist was killed by the Lebanese army on Thursday during operations in the country’s north-east border with war-torn Syria. A second senior Islamic State fighter was also killed and another terrorist arrested. The Lebanese army operation was targeting terrorist “key points” along the border. International Business Times reports: Nayef Shaalan, who also was called Abu Fouz, was the leader of the extremist group aka either ISIL or ISIS in the border town of Arsal, long a stronghold of the militant group.

Vice News has obtained footage claiming to show ISIS fighters involved in a fatal battle with Kurdish Peshmerga 30 miles outside of Mosul. The headcam footage was recovered from an ISIS fighter’s helmet and finishes with the man getting shot and martyred. Talk and Purpose reports: As VICE rightly points out, the ISIS propaganda wing, comprised of a growing collective of sympathetic media outlets, is prudent in how it represents the group’s battlefield prowess on the internet.

Security services in Sweden have been put on high alert in connection with a potential terrorist attack threat from ISIS. Intelligence officials say that several ISIS militants arrived in Sweden recently in order to carry out attacks on civilian targets in Stockholm. “Right now we’re gathering information and intelligence and coordinating with our national and international partners,” security police (Säpo) press spokesman Simon Bynert told the TT news agency. Oikotimes.com reports: He added that Säpo is also cooperating with the national police service.

In the last week of March, immediately in the aftermath of the tragic Brussels bombing which ISIS took responsibility for and which was subsequently revealed as organized by a semi-autonomous Brussels cell operating closely with the French cell responsible for the November 2015 terrorist attack, we reported that the Islamic State group has trained at least 400 attackers and sent them into Europe for terror attacks.

ISIS appears to be at a bit of a crossroads. As we detailed yesterday, faced with a cash crunch and significant military losses, the organization is becoming quite strained. The group has reached the point where the rank and file are becoming frustrated and have started to defect.

In order to stop the defections, ISIS dug deep in its bag of incentives and decided to employ the carrot and stick method.

First we learned of the stick, which is to literally freeze members to death if they're caught trying to defect.

As we wrote yesterday