As the world is launching a global war on terror, ISIS is launching a global war of terror especially in Africa.The latest bombings in Sanaa and Tunisia this week show ISIS expanding its theater of operations and overcoming Al-Qaeda. Here is how international experts and analysts are warning again of the lying dangers of the terrorist group in the Middle East that exceeds the dangers of Al-Qaeda. Bombings of mosques in Yemen have been rare and some analysts warn that Friday's attacks mark a new low in the country's violence which could plunge Yemen into a spiral of sectarian conflict between the country's majority Sunnis and minority Shia Muslims. If so, it will be hard to stop. The timing of the attacks in Sanaa virtually guaranteed a bloodbath, and the tactics used did too. According to witnesses a suicide bomber started the attack on the Badr mosque inside the building and that was followed minutes later by an explosion outside, presumably planned to harm those fleeing the first blasts and to strike first-responders and civilian rescuers, say senior Houthi leaders. Those tactics are straight out of al Qaeda's playbook. At Hashoush mosque the plan may have been the same but one of the bombers was stopped at a checkpoint outside and detonated his explosions before his companion made it inside to trigger his blast. Before the Islamic State's claim of credit for the carnage, Houthis also blamed al Qaeda. Others pointed the finger at the country's ousted strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, despite the fact that he has been implicated in the Houthis toppling of Hadi. Yemen has been the base of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which controls several provinces in the south and has carried out similarly complex suicide attacks on the Houthis before. A car bomb in January that killed 30 outside a police academy in Sanaa was blamed on the group. But the Islamic State, al Qaeda's rival, announced the formation of a local branch last November, drawing some AQAP defections, among them possibly some bombing tacticians. The mosque explosions came a day after fierce clashes erupted between Houthi rebels and their supporters and government forces still loyal to Hadi in the port city of Aden, nearly 200 miles southeast of Sanaa. Houthi warplanes attacked the presidential palace in Aden, where Hadi has been based since fleeing last month from Sanaa, where he had been placed under house arrest. Hadi's downfall and the Houthis' sweep into the Yemeni capital was a blow to U.S. counter-terror efforts. The Hadi government had cooperated with Washington to target al Qaeda operatives in drone strikes. If ISIS was responsible for the blasts in Sanaa, it would mark, along with the attack in Tunis, a spectacular, albeit grisly, debut week on the international terror stage. Until this week, ISIS has focused on defending it's so-called caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria. But the group's international ambitions have been clear, encouraging al Qaeda affiliates to defect and swear allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or helping them to form new jihadist offshoots. AQAP remains for US officials the most worrisome of all the terror network's branches, U.S. intelligence officials say. That's because the group possesses sophisticated knowledge and expertise for building bombs that can be smuggled onto commercial aircraft without being detected by security scanners. Experts said the extremist group may have been trying to give the impression that it could launch a coordinated, region-wide campaign of attacks. IS "demonstrated in recent weeks its ability to coordinate a vast expansion movement, first in Libya, then Tunisia, and finally Yemen," said Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor at the Sciences-Po institute in Paris. He said the attacks suggested IS "wants to show would-be jihadists its ability to strike the enemy... more violently than AQAP could". "Already, whole sections of AQAP are leaning towards Daesh," he added, using the Arabic acronym for IS. Analysts say AQAP's potency in Yemen may have diminished since the country's descent into disarray. IS, by comparison, has expanded rapidly after seizing parts of Iraq and Syria last year, receiving pledges of fealty from jihadist groups in Egypt and Libya, and now, allegedly, offshoots in Tunisia and Yemen. In spite of the severe rift that has formed between IS and Al-Qaeda's Syria branch Al-Nusra Front, AQAP last year called on Muslims to support IS in order to face down "crusaders" in the Middle East, seen at the time as a sign of deference from the Yemeni organisation. AQAP has also been hit by defections. Its fighters from Dhamar and Sanaa provinces claimed allegiance to IS last month with the stated intention of attacking Huthis who, as Shiites, are viewed by the group as heretics. "Since the Huthi militiamen took control of the capital and a good part of the country, Al-Qaeda lost credibility, having been unable to defend even Sunni provinces," said Mathieu Guidere, an expert in Islam at the University of Toulouse. IS meanwhile "has never hidden its desire to expand into (the Arabian Peninsula), and Yemen is a prime target as it is seen as the birthplace of the Arabs," he added. In addition, the group could be seeking what Guidere termed "the strategic encirclement of Saudi Arabia," after having seized much of Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland, including Anbar Province, which borders the kingdom to the north. Filiu warned that IS attacks in Yemen and Tunisia in the space of a few days could be just the beginning of the group's next phase. "My hunch is that this movement (into the two countries), marked by a significant acceleration, is the precursor to the resumption of a terror campaign in Europe," he said.
