Italy followed France on Monday in beefing up security following the attack on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow and the vindication of duty through an associate of the Islamic State group.
The attack has renewed attention in Europe on the situation posed by the extremists, and in particular their Central Asian affiliate, as the continent prepares for major events such as the Paris Olympics and the European Championship in Germany.
France on Sunday raised its security alert posture to the next level. In Italy, a National Security Council meeting on Monday resulted in a resolution to beef up security around Easter celebrations leading up to Easter this weekend.
Surveillance and controls will be reinforced, “paying the utmost attention to the places of greatest concentration and transit of people, as sensitive targets,” the Italian Interior Ministry said in a statement. Pope Francis has a busy schedule of events in Rome and the Vatican in the days leading up to Easter Sunday.
In Germany, Interior Ministry spokesman Cornelius Funke said the risk to Islamist extremists “remains serious” but that authorities’ assessment of the dangers has not replaced it in the wake of Moscow’s attack.
In Serbia, secret police officers armed with automatic weapons were seen patrolling the streets of Belgrade over the weekend. President Aleksandar Vucic said plainclothes police and police would guard sports venues and shopping malls in the capital. The move has been criticized for Vucic’s hostilities. political parties and with the intention of frightening the population.
An associate of the Islamic State group, known as ISIS-K, IS-K or ISPK, claimed responsibility for the attack in Moscow, according to U. S. and other Western officials. The affiliate has carried out attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized force in 2021.
This is behind the August 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed thirteen U. S. infantrymen and about 170 Afghans during the chaotic U. S. withdrawal. It also claimed responsibility for a bombing in Kerman, Iran, in January that killed another 95 people at a memorial procession.
But it is active and on the radar of governments in Europe.
IS-K, which according to the German Interior Ministry’s Funke “is, in our judgment, ISIS’s maximum competitive partner at the moment,” has been connected through the German government to three alleged plots since July.
These come with an alleged plan that led the government to increase security at Cologne Cathedral at Christmas and, most recently, the arrest last week of two Afghans accused of planning to attack police near the Swedish parliament in reaction to the burning of copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris had intelligence pointing to “an IS entity” blamed for the attack on Moscow and that the organization was involved in several attempted attacks in recent months in France.
He did not call IS-K in particular, but said a holiday in French Guiana was the reason France had activated its security alert as a “precautionary measure”.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said 4,000 troops were fit to be deployed, in addition to the 3,000 soldiers in a position patrolling across the country at exercise stations and near sites such as schools, places of worship and concert halls.
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Associated Press writers Colleen Barry in Milan, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.
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