[SkinnyFella]

The irony of this post is delicious. Millienials Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan get tired of work at age 29, quit, and to travel to a dangerous area of the world because "Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans" and get killed by ISIS militants.



Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/w...k-cylists.html

http://www.simplycycling.org/blog/20...t-my-job-today

https://www.pluralist.com/posts/1824...nd-gets-killed


MOSCOW — A car ran down a group of touring cyclists in the Central Asian state of Tajikistan over the weekend, killing four people from the United States, the Netherlands and Switzerland. On Monday, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

In a video obtained by Radio Free Europe on Monday that purports to show the attack, a car can be seen making a U-turn on a rural road and then speeding back through a group of fallen and injured cyclists. Tajik authorities said the occupants of the car then got out and stabbed and shot some of the survivors, leaving little doubt that the assault was intentional.

In a bulletin issued by the internal news agency of the Islamic State on Monday, the group described the assailants as “soldiers of the Islamic State” and said the attack was “in response to calls to target citizens of Coalition countries.”

That wording is a reference to a 2014 speech by the terrorist group’s former spokesman, in which he called on the group’s followers to carry out attacks in their countries in any way they could, including by using cars to crush pedestrians. The choice of language indicates that the militants view the attackers in Tajikistan as having been inspired by propaganda, and that they were not directly deployed by the terrorist organization.

The Tajik Interior Ministry confirmed the four deaths and said that members of the security services had killed four people suspected of being involved in the attack, all natives of Tajikistan, and had detained a fifth person. The Tajik police said they had found a Daewoo car with damage consistent with a collision with the cyclists.

The United States Embassy in Tajikistan confirmed in a statement posted on its website that two of the four people killed in the attack were American citizens. They were part of a group of cyclists who were biking in the Danghara district, about 60 miles south of the country’s capital, Dushanbe, on a picturesque mountain road that has been popular with Western bicyclists for its dramatic and remote scenery in a region close to the border with Afghanistan.

Officials identified the other two who were killed as citizens of Switzerland and of the Netherlands. Three other cyclists were injured. Ferghana, a Central Asia news site, said one cyclist, a Frenchman, escaped harm because he had fallen behind the group before the attack began.

Though Islamist movements have been active in Central Asia for decades, they have not been known for targeting Western tourists, who visit the historical cities of the Silk Road in Uzbekistan and hike and cycle in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Ferghana news site suggested that the attack could frighten off tourists.

The Islamic State’s claim of responsibility appears to be its first for an attack inside Tajikistan, analysts said. That is surprising, given the large number of Tajiks are believed to have joined the militants.

According to a recent report by the Soufan Group, at least 1,300 citizens of Tajikistan traveled to join the jihad in Iraq and Syria. That is among the largest numbers for a single country. By contrast, no more than a few dozen Americans are believed to have made it into ISIS-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria.

Central Asia has been better known as a source of militants who strike at Europeans and Americans elsewhere. Tajiks and Uzbeks carried out or tried to carry out attacks in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Stockholm, and an Uzbek man who emigrated to the United States in 2010 drove a rented truck down a path along the Hudson River in Manhattan in October, killing eight people.

Tajikistan is a poor former Soviet state that fought a civil war against Islamist insurgents in the 1990s and has been plagued since then by local unrest and spillover violence from the opium-smuggling trade in Afghanistan.

A car-bomb attack in 2016 in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, struck the Chinese Embassy and was attributed to a militant group linked to Al Qaeda and composed of Uighurs, an ethnic group from western China.

The British Foreign Office released a statement on Monday warning tourists in the area, “particularly those hiking or cycling in the southern part, to exercise extreme caution.”

[azdesertsnake01]

I can't find the video so far. I would LOVE to see it. Libtards are a source of endless humor. This is one for the record book. Let's send them ALL on the same bike ride!

[ambubadger]

Remember in March of 2008 when that Italian "artist" hitch-hiked through Turkey to promote world peace, only to end up gang raped and strangled? No? Guess you won't see that on the mainstream news outlets...

[CrunchyCripple]

There is a difference in saying “there are bad ethnicities/countries” and “There are some bad people in ethnicities/countries”.

What the dumb fuck “world love” people don’t seem to understand is that there ARE bad people peppered in with the good ones. There are enough of them that it’s not hard to cross paths with them - and fuck up your day.

[Silky]

If there's a video it has to be on some ISIS propaganda website.

[Steve]

ISIS are nearly dead and buried and this is what they have sunk too, pathetic bastards the lot of em.

[kellyhound]

[TheVrist]

I think every humanitarian should take a bike ride there for the sake of diversity and multiculturalism. Even better, if they stay.

[sandogdiver]

Whats it mean when they say one of the attackers was “liquidated”?

[niknik]

Probably wasn't even ISIS. It's probably just easier for these territories to just blame ISIS publicly.

Its not like the victims families are going to show up demanding answers, with Dateline in tow. Or even the locals, they don't give a shit about that shit.

Its not like ISIS is above taking credit when the opportunity arises.