Restive Islamists Sowing Terror

"Police have prevented co-ordinated terrorist attacks at different locations in the country that would cause serious destabilization, chaos and fear."
"The members of the group are extremists and criminals with remarkable military training and skills. That's why we have paid such a high price with the loss of lives."
Macedonian President George Ivanov

"Macedonian police have performed the most complicated operation and the police forces, with officers from all ethnic groups, have performed a professional, heroic and patriotic operation."
Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski

Residents visit the area were a battle took place involving the police and an armed group, in northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo, on Sunday, May 10, 2015.  (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) 

A group of over forty armed men acting as a terrorist cell of Islamists planned to attack state institutions in Macedonia, as well as sport events and shopping malls. Focusing on those areas where people tend to congregate, where people in numbers are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. And the more successful the attack, the greater the number of people who perish in the attacks. Reflecting the dedication of the jihadis to their faith.

Macedonia's National Security Council had cause to arrange an emergency meeting in the country's capital Skopje. The President returned swiftly from Moscow where he was helping Russia commemorate 70 years since the end of the Second World War, and Russia's sacrifices, battling Nazi Germany, once Russia withdrew from its collaboration with Germany.

The armed and obviously well-trained group planned its attacks to destabilize the country, battling police over the weekend, where twenty-two people were left dead. Among the dead were eight police and fourteen attackers, according to Interior Ministry spokesman, Ivo Kotevski. Two days of mourning was declared for those who lost their lives in the conflict.

The Interior Minister named five leaders of the armed group, all of them citizens of Kosovo and founders of paramilitary cells. They had infiltrated Macedonia earlier in May for the purpose of launching attacks on state institutions. They installed themselves surreptitiously in the western neighbourhood of Kumanovo, where a huge cache of weapons had been discovered.

The ethnically mixed town located 40 kilometres north-east of Skopje, close to the border with Kosovo and Serbia was a hostile centre between Albanian rebels and government forces in 2001 during the ethnic conflict. Ethnic Albanians comprise a quarter of the population of two million in Macedonia. Like restive Muslim populations across the world, this region has not been spared from Islamist jihad.

Some of the attackers who were killed were wearing uniforms complete with the insignia of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, now disbanded, but were lacking identification documents. They had fought Serbian government forces for the independence of Kosovo in 1998-99 in a brutal conflict.