World

SRINAGAR — Indian soldiers killed eight people trying to cross the disputed border with Pakistan in Kashmir on Tuesday and security forces were also fighting suspected militants near the frontier, army officials said, two days after a major attack on an Indian base.

The flare-up in violence comes after India blamed Pakistan for Sunday's attack on the brigade headquarters in the town of Uri near the border that killed 18 soldiers, heightening already tense relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Pakistan denies any role in the raid, one of the deadliest in the divided Himalayan region over which India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars.

A senior Indian army officer told Reuters that his men had spotted a group of intruders trying to cross into Indian territory around Uri on Tuesday. The troops killed at least eight, and had set out to retrieve the bodies and hunt for any survivors, he said.

Army spokesman Manish Kumar said a number of infiltrators had been killed, but he could not confirm how many.

Indian security forces were also fighting four to five militants in the Nowgam area close to the Line of Control (LOC), a senior army officer said, the de facto border where thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops face off against each other.

"In the morning we saw the LOC fence was cut. We launched an operation and we have trapped around 4-5 militants," he said.

In Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, a Pakistani colonel said there was no firing along the border. Both sides were on high alert and strengthening their positions, he said.

Pakistani foreign office spokesman Nafees Zakaria reiterated that no shot had been fired by Pakistan, after Indian television channels said troops of both countries had exchanged fire.

"There seems to be some activity across the border but there has been no activity from our side, not one shot fired from here," he told Reuters.

India says Pakistan is helping smuggle fighters across the border, but says the number of infiltration attempts has dropped over the last decade. The army said that before Tuesday it had foiled 17 attempts this year, and killed 31 suspected militants.

Pakistan accuses New Delhi of using the attack to deflect attention from unrest in the portion of Kashmir India controls.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged Monday that there would be no repeat of last year's "chaotic" border opening to refugees, after a stinging defeat for her party in a Berlin state election.

Even as she defended the "political and ethical" decision to let in one million asylum seekers in 2015 in the face of a potential humanitarian catastrophe, Merkel reached out to critics.

"If I could, I would turn back time many, many years to better prepare myself, the federal government and all those in positions of responsibility for the situation we were rather unprepared for in the late summer of 2015," Merkel said.

Merkel, who has been in office since 2005, was speaking to reporters after a dismal showing for her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in Berlin, just two weeks after a drubbing for the party in another regional poll.

The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) harnessed a wave of anger over the refugee influx to claim around 14 per cent of the vote, poaching support from the venerable mainstream parties.

The strong AfD result, thanks to support especially in the vast tower block districts in Berlin's former communist east, meant it has now won opposition seats in 10 of Germany's 16 states.

Its success has mirrored the march of anti-migrant parties in France, Austria and the Netherlands as well as Republican maverick Donald Trump in the United States.

'Sad but true' 

News website Spiegel Online noted that although the AfD had fallen short of its own goal of a second-place finish, "the right-wing populists — sad but true — now belong to the new normal in Germany."

Merkel's CDU slumped to just 18 per cent — its worst result in the city since World War II — likely spelling the end of its term as junior coalition partner to the Social Democrats (SPD), who won just under 22 per cent.

Analysts said the drubbing would force Merkel, widely seen as Europe's most influential leader, to focus on German affairs at a time when the EU is facing sluggish economic growth, growing divisions over its migration policy and Britain's impending exit.

In an unusually frank opening statement, Merkel said the errors of the past included a long-standing refusal to accept Germany's transformation into a multicultural society.

"We weren't exactly the world champions in integration before the refugee influx," she wryly admitted, noting that the infrastructure for getting newcomers into language and job training had to be ramped up overnight.

Merkel acknowledged that her "We can do it" rallying cry during the refugee crisis had become a provocation to many who felt it expressed a glibness about the challenges ahead and said she would now refrain from using it.

But she continued to resist calls from within her conservative bloc to set a formal upper limit for the number of asylum seekers admitted to Germany.

And she struck an optimistic note about the ability of Europe's top economic power to eventually integrate tens of thousands of refugees who will remain in Germany, including many from war-ravaged Syria.

"I am absolutely certain that we will emerge from this admittedly complicated phase better than we went into it," she said.

Foothold for hard right 

Berlin marked the fifth regional poll in a row showing losses for the CDU, as voter angst over the refugee influx shakes Merkel's once firm standing with the electorate.

The AfD's string of successes indicates that for the first time since World War II, a party to the right of the CDU has established a foothold in German politics.

AfD co-leader Frauke Petry said the Berlin poll marked the start of a "countdown" to the general election next September or October, when she predicted the party would clinch a "double-digit result".

Political scientist Karl-Rudolf Korte of the University of Duisburg-Essen said the series of setbacks would force Merkel to focus on shoring up domestic support at the expense of international crisis management.

"Merkel will stay in Germany more and travel abroad less, to explain her policies to citizens and why they should vote for her again next year," he told public broadcaster ZDF. 

Srinagar, India — India's prime minister on Monday summoned top security advisers to thrash out a response to a deadly raid on a Kashmir army base blamed on militants from Pakistan, amid calls for tough action against the nuclear-armed nation.

Narendra Modi has vowed to punish those behind the attack in which gunmen hurling grenades stormed a base, killing 17 soldiers in the worst such attack in over a decade. An 18th soldier died in hospital on Monday.

The Hindu nationalist prime minister promised during his election campaign to take a hard line over Kashmir and has faced calls from army veterans — and even some in his own party — for military action against Pakistan.

On Monday he summoned his national security adviser and military leaders to formulate a response, which media reports said could include air strikes on training camps on the Pakistan side of the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Kashmir.

But security experts say India lacks the military capabilities to take on its neighbour in the divided Himalayan region, already tense after weeks of violent clashes between police and demonstrators protesting at Indian rule.

"It's not like the US conducting air strikes in Syria to tackle ISIS [Daesh] that's hundreds of miles away from home ground, Pakistan is next door," said Ajai Sahni, executive director at the Institute of Conflict Management think tank in Delhi.

"India knows it can't sustain a 15-day war against Pakistan and Pakistan knows it can't sustain a similar war against India."

Local media also urged caution, with the Indian Express saying calls for military action were "easier made than acted upon".

'Right to respond' 

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan but both claim it in full. The two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since gaining independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

India regularly accuses its arch-rival of arming and sending rebels across the heavily militarised border that divides Kashmir between the two countries, to launch attacks on its forces.

Ranbir Singh, the army's director general of military operations, said the markings on some of the material recovered from the slain militants showed they had come from across the border, while insisting India had the resources to adequately respond to Pakistan.

"The Indian army has displayed considerable restraint while handling the terrorist situation both along the Line of Control and in the hinterland," he said at a media briefing Monday. 

"...We reserve the right to respond to any act of the adversary at a time and place of our own choosing."

On Sunday Home Minister Rajnath Singh accused Pakistan of "continued and direct support to terrorism and terrorist groups" and called for it to be internationally isolated. 

As the war of words intensified on Monday, Pakistan's Army Chief Raheel Sharif said his forces were "fully prepared to respond to entire spectrum of direct and indirect threat".

Islamabad meanwhile accused New Delhi of trying to deflect attention from weeks of unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir with what it called "vitriolic and unsubstantiated statements".

"It is a blatant attempt on India's part to deflect attention from the fast deteriorating humanitarian and human rights situation in the Indian-occupied Kashmir since the death of Burhan Wani," Pakistan's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Sunday's attack followed weeks of protests sparked by the killing of the popular rebel leader in a gunfight with security forces.

At least 87 civilians have been killed and thousands injured in clashes between protesters and security forces, the worst unrest to hit Kashmir since 2010.

On Monday more than 50 people were injured when security forces fired tear gas and pellet guns at protesters who defied a curfew in southern Kashmir, according to local police.

Sunday's attack was one of the bloodiest on soldiers since an armed rebellion against Indian rule erupted in 1989. Militants killed 30 soldiers and their families in a suicide attack in Kaluchak area in 2002.

On Monday soldiers paid tribute to their colleagues, most of whom died when their tents and other accommodation caught fire, at a wreath-laying ceremony in Kashmir's main city of Srinagar.

The Indian army has blamed Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was implicated in an audacious attack on an Indian air force base in Pathankot in the northern state of Punjab in January that left seven soldiers dead.

NEW YORK — A bomb that tore through an upscale New York neighbourhood injuring 29 people was an act of terror, the state governor said on Sunday, but the motive is unknown and there has been no claim of responsibility.

Heavily armed police and National Guard soldiers deployed throughout New York as the city of 8.4 million prepared to welcome world leaders at the UN General Assembly on Monday.

The attack happened late Saturday in Chelsea, one of Manhattan's most fashionable districts packed with bars, restaurants and luxury residential buildings.

Police discovered a second bomb planted four blocks away, which was safely defused and is currently being analysed, officers said.

The bombing came as a extremist-linked website claimed that an “Islamic State [Daesh] group soldier" carried out a stabbing attack in a US mall that left eight people injured late Saturday in the state of Minnesota.

Local police said the attacker "made some references to Allah", but the motive was unclear. The attacker was shot dead by an off-duty police officer. There was no suggestion it was linked to the New York bombing.

"A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it's not linked to international terrorism," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters on Sunday as he visited the crime scene.

"In other words, we find no ISIS [Daesh] connection, etcetera," said Cuomo, which is based in Iraq and Syria.

Motive unknown 

New York police chief James O'Neill said no individual or group had yet claimed responsibility.

O'Neill said he could not say with a "100 per cent degree of certainty" where the blast originated. US media reported that it was planted in a dumpster on 23rd Street where major construction work is taking place.

A hot line has been set up for tips. Police have a video of the bombing and were searching for anyone seen in the area before the explosion.

"We know it's a very serious incident, but we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this," Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters.

"Was it a political motivation, a personal motivation. What was it? We do not know that yet," he added, calling on residents to be vigilant.

FBI official William Sweeney said federal investigators would be pouring through online traffic, individuals and organisations.

"We will look at everything," he told the news conference. "We'll look at social networks, at all the incoming tips and leads. Everything that comes in gets a look. We don't discard anything."

New York will see a stepped up security presence, with an additional nearly 1,000 state police and National Guard deployed to airports, bus terminals and subway stations, officials said.

The explosion on 23rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, caused "significant" damage, shattering glass and shrapnel across the street, but there is no structural damage to any buildings. 

Extra police 

While the two devices planted in Manhattan appear to be similar, they seem to be different than a pipe bomb that exploded in the neighbouring state of New Jersey on Saturday causing no injuries, officials said.

Of the 29 people who sustained injuries in New York, 24 were taken to hospital with various degrees of scrapes and abrasions from glass and metal. All have since been released, officials confirmed on Sunday.

New York lauds itself as the safest big city in America. Violent crime is rare in Manhattan and police say they have foiled 20 terror plots since the 2001 Al Qaeda hijackings destroyed the Twin Towers.

New York Congressman Peter King said the fact that officials had not yet determined a known terrorist link was not necessarily conclusive.

"In many of these cases we don't know until two, three or four days later whether or not there is a terrorist link," he told CBS. "The fact there is no evidence right now doesn't mean much," he added.

Police have sealed off northern Chelsea around the crime scene and dozens of officers were out in force Sunday. An AFP photographer said there was lots of debris, including rubble and glass on 23rd Street. 

"Today there special events occurring throughout the city. Actually in all five boroughs. We've increased our police presence in each of these events," said senior New York police officer Carlos Gomez.

"We've also added more counter-terrorism officers as well as heavy weapons teams at some of these events. Teams from the strategic response group as well as the critical response command," he said. 

WASHINGTON — Minnesota police said on Sunday they were investigating a shopping mall stabbing spree that injured eight, but could not comment on a claim that the Daesh terror group was behind the attack.

A man who made "some references to Allah" stabbed and injured eight people in a shopping mall in the city of St Cloud late on Saturday before he was shot dead by an off-duty officer, police said.

The suspect "asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he assaulted them", Blair Anderson, the St Cloud police chief, told journalists.

But he emphasised that the assailant's motivation remained unclear.

"Whether that was a terrorist attack or not, I'm not willing to say that right now because we just don't know," he said.

Local officials had no immediate response to a claim by the Daesh-linked news website Amaq that the assailant was "a soldier of the Islamic State [Daesh]”.

A St Cloud police officer told AFP on Sunday that the department was actively investigating the attack, but had no further information for public release and had no immediate plans for further news briefings.

Speaking shortly after midnight, Chief Anderson said the armed suspect entered the Crossroads Centre mall in St Cloud — a city of about 67,000 people some 110km northwest of Minneapolis — and attacked at least eight people.

The lone suspect was wearing a private security uniform and had at least one knife, and "made some references to Allah", the police chief said.

"That suspect was confronted by an off-duty police officer and summarily shot and killed," he said.

Anderson said the eight injured people were taken to a hospital. All but one was later released.

The suspect had a history of minor traffic violations, Anderson said, adding that police do not currently believe the attack was connected to any other incident.

The Minnesota attack came as 29 people were injured in a deliberate explosion in a busy New York neighbourhood late on Saturday. Mayor Bill de Blasio said there was currently no known link to international terror.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she had been briefed about the Minnesota stabbing as well as Saturday's explosions in New York, as well as a pipe bomb blast hours earlier in a trash can in New Jersey in which no one was injured.

The St Cloud mall will remain closed as police continue their investigation.

"It's an awful day," Anderson said. "Starting tomorrow things won't be the same here."

SRINAGAR, India — India accused Pakistan of being behind a separatist attack on an army base near their disputed frontier on Sunday that killed 17 soldiers, in one of the most deadly attacks in Kashmir in a quarter-century-old insurgency.

Four commando-style gunmen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and grenade launchers, burst into the brigade headquarters in Uri at 5:30am (midnight GMT) and were killed after a three-hour gunfight, a senior Indian army officer said.

The incident sharply increased tensions between the bitter, nuclear-armed rivals and will raise fears of a potential military escalation. Indian and Pakistani troops are in close proximity in many places along one of the world's most heavily militarised frontiers, and exchanges of fire are not uncommon.

Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh told reporters in New Delhi that Sunday's attack bore the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. Evidence gathered at the scene indicated the attackers were foreign and their equipment bore Pakistani markings, he added.

"Our men are ready to give a befitting response," Singh said in response to a reporter's question. He did not elaborate.

Pakistan denied any involvement.

Earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who in recent weeks has signalled a more muscular approach in his country's rivalry with Pakistan, strongly condemned what he called the "cowardly terror attack".

"I assure the nation that those behind this despicable attack will not go unpunished," Modi said in a series of Twitter posts.

The raid came as tensions were already running high in India's only Muslim-majority region, which has faced more than two months of protests after the July 8 killing of a commander of another Pakistan-based separatist group.

At least 78 civilians have been killed and thousands injured in street clashes with Indian security forces, who have been criticised by human rights groups for using excessive force.

In an even stronger response, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted: "Pakistan is a terrorist state and should be identified and isolated as such."

Pakistan rejected allegations that it was involved. "India immediately puts blame on Pakistan without doing any investigation. We reject this," foreign ministry spokesman Nafees Zakaria told Reuters.

India has blamed Pakistan-based militant groups for a string of attacks on its territory — including an assault on Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people.

The two countries have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 over Kashmir, which is divided between them along a de facto border known as the "Line of Control". Both claim the former princely state in full.

Choppers fly in, smoke rises

Most of the fatalities happened in army tents and temporary shelters that caught fire from incendiary ammunition used by the attackers, Singh, the Indian army's director general of military operations, told the briefing in New Delhi.

He informed his Pakistani counterpart of his findings, which linked the attack on Uri to a similar raid in January on an Indian Air Force base in Punjab that India also blames on Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The Pakistani army confirmed in a statement that the Indian side had established contact via a hotline. Its military operations chief "reiterated that no infiltration is allowed from Pakistani soil", it said.

Reuters television footage showed helicopters flying in to evacuate the injured as an operation continued to secure the area. Smoke rose from the compound, set in mountainous terrain. The defence ministry earlier put the number of wounded at 35.

Singh, the home minister, chaired a crisis meeting in New Delhi and cancelled trips to Russia and the United States. The army chief of staff headed to Uri, roughly halfway between Indian Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar and Islamabad, to investigate the attack.

"There are definite and conclusive indications that the perpetrators of Uri attack were highly trained, heavily armed and specially equipped," Singh said in a series of strongly worded tweets that were confirmed as genuine by his office.

The US State Department "strongly condemned" the Uri attack, which comes weeks after Secretary of State John Kerry visited New Delhi.

After that meeting Kerry urged Pakistan to do more to combat terrorism, while also announcing the resumption of trilateral talks with India and Afghanistan this month in New York, leaving Islamabad looking isolated.

Worst body count in years

The military death toll was one of the worst India has suffered in a single incident during years of conflict in its northernmost territory.

Before this attack, 102 people had been killed in separatist violence in India's part of the Himalayan region this year. Among them were 30 security personnel, 71 militants and one civilian, according to a tally by the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal.

Modi recently raised the stakes in the neighbours' decades-old feud by expressing support for separatists in Pakistan's resource-rich Baluchistan province.

Pakistan has, meanwhile, called on the United Nations and the international community to investigate atrocities it alleges have been committed by Indian security forces in Kashmir.

The UN is preparing to hold its annual general assembly in New York, where Kashmir is likely to come on to the agenda amid concerns that India's tough rhetoric could herald a military escalation between the old foes.

Senior Indian journalist and commentator Shekhar Gupta said Pakistan would be "delusional" to think that India would not respond. "This India has moved on from old strategic restraint," he said.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been on edge since the New-Year attack on the Pathankot Air force Base in Punjab, near the border with Pakistan, that killed seven uniformed men.

After initial progress, an attempt to conduct a joint investigation into the air base attack lost momentum and a tentative peace dialogue has stalled. 

WASHINGTON — After years of fueling conspiracy theories, Republican White House nominee Donald Trump admitted on Friday that President Barack Obama is an American as he tried to neutralise damaging charges of racism.

But he also stepped up attacks against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, accusing her of initiating the doubts about Obama and later raising the specter of violence against her again.

In a much-hyped televised event, Trump gave a lengthy plug for his new Washington hotel before acknowledging that "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period."

The mogul-turned-politico pointedly did not apologise, nor did he walk back similarly baseless claims that Obama — whose father was a Kenyan Muslim — founded the violent Daesh group.

Instead, he tried to pin blame for "birtherism" on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, whom he accused, without evidence, of starting the movement that questions Obama's nationality and right to be president.

"Her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean," Trump said.

The celebrity TV star has questioned Obama's US citizenship — a legal prerequisite for becoming president — since at least 2011.

The White House has long viewed Trump's claims as a racist attempt to delegitimise the president.

The charges also served to launch Trump's political career, propelling him onto the national stage and winning him fans on the far right.

But five years on, now in a tight presidential election race, Trump's position has become a liability, repulsing black, Hispanic and moderate voters whose support he needs to win the Oval Office.

The controversy reignited Thursday when Trump again demurred on Obama's citizenship, forcing his campaign into damage control.

Threat of violence 

Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton jumped on the statement as more evidence that Trump is unfit to be president.

"For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimise our first black president," she said. "His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history."

"He's feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country," she added. 

"Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple. And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology."

Trump went on the attack again later in the day, raising the threat of violence against Clinton again, suggesting her Secret Service guards voluntarily disarm and "see what happens to her".

Members of Clinton's government-appointed guard detail should abandon their weapons because she wants to "destroy your Second Amendment", he said, referring to the US Constitution's clause that enshrines the rights of Americans to bear arms.

"I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons," the real estate billionaire told a cheering rally in Miami. "Take their guns away. She doesn't want guns. Take them. Let's see what happens to her. Take their guns away, OK. It will be very dangerous."

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook condemned Trump's remarks, saying they "should be out of bounds for a presidential candidate".

CNN and other major TV stations did not broadcast Trump's rally as they often do, suggesting the US media is heeding widespread criticism that it devotes too much attention to the Republican candidate.

'Bigotry and bias' 

First Lady Michelle Obama also criticised Trump during her 2016 campaign debut on Friday, saying the choice for voters is "excruciatingly clear" between Clinton and a candidate who "traffics in prejudice, fear and lies".

She said her husband had answered slanders through legislative achievements and "by going high when they go low", as she encouraged supporters to go to the polls.

The latest opinion surveys indicate a tight race, although Clinton retains a notable lead in vital battleground states.

Asked in the Oval Office about the renewed birther controversy Friday, President Obama gave the question short shrift, making a dig at the US media and its obsessive coverage of Trump.

"I am shocked that a question like that would come up at a time when we have so many other things to do," he said, before adding "Well, I am not that shocked."

"I was pretty confident about where I was born. My hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues than that." 

Obama produced his birth certificate in 2011 — showing he was born at the Kapiolani Medical Centre in Hawaii on August 4, 1961 — to put an end to the allegations.

Appearing at the White House Correspondents' Dinner shortly after, he publicly ridiculed Trump, who was in the audience.

"No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," Obama said.

"And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"

SRINAGAR, India — Thousands of angry demonstrators defied a curfew on Saturday in Indian Kashmir to attend the funeral of a schoolboy whose body was found riddled with pellets, sparking clashes with security forces across the restive region.

The 11-year-old boy's body was found late on Friday in the outskirts of the main city of Srinagar, in Harwan, after security forces used pellet guns to break up protesting crowds despite the government vowing to replace the weapons.

Kashmir has been hit by months of violent protests over the killing of a young militant by Indian soldiers.

Government forces fired tear gas shells on Saturday to disperse stone-throwing protesters, triggering more clashes in at least half a dozen places across Srinagar and southern parts of the Himalayan valley.

"Forces responded when large crowds defied restrictions. Many were injured on both sides during the clashes that followed," a local police officer told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

Another police official said nearly 100, mostly protesters, had been injured in the latest protests. 

The killing of the schoolboy took the death toll to 81 in the worst violence to hit the Muslim-majority territory since 2010.

The government has been coming under growing pressure over the level of casualties in Kashmir during the protests against Indian rule, which broke out after the death of a popular rebel leader on July 8 in a gunbattle with soldiers.

Most have died in clashes between protesters and government forces who have fired tear gas and pellet guns at demonstrators.

India's home minister police and troops would use chilli-based shells instead of ones filled with birdshot after hundreds of civilians sustained serious eye injuries in the clashes.

The metal pellets or birdshot fired from the pump-action shotguns rarely result in deaths, but can often blind victims if the fragments hit them in the eye.

Authorities have imposed a curfew across large parts of the region, with schools, shops and many banks closed.

Internet and mobile networks have also been cut off in a bid to prevent protests.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the two gained independence from British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in full.

Several rebel groups have for decades fought Indian soldiers — currently numbering around 500,000 — deployed in the territory, demanding independence for the region or its merger with Pakistan.

Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting. 

PARIS — While 9/11 failed to bring America to its knees as Al Qaeda hoped, it ushered in an era of instability, especially in the Middle East, that extremists have skilfully exploited, analysts say.

By reacting with a doctrine of "Shock and Awe" and invading Iraq in 2003, the US committed a series of missteps that indirectly helped foment extremism, say critics.

Founded in the 1980s, Al Qaeda was gravely weakened after being expelled from Afghanistan in 2001 by the US-led invasion of the country that had harboured the terror group's leader Osama Bin Laden.

But the occupation of Iraq offered them a new opportunity, underlining how extremist groups have resisted attempts to vanquish them and have now expanded into franchises in the Middle East, Asia, the West and parts of Africa.

"September 11 was the culmination of several years of planning by Al Qaeda of 'the big one'," Didier Le Bret, who recently resigned as France's national intelligence coordinator to run in next year's parliamentary election, told AFP.

"Above all it marked the start of a realisation [by the Americans] of their vulnerability on home soil. And that is something they cannot bear."

He said the invasion illustrated the dangers of acting first and worrying about the consequences afterwards.

Among the consequences was the damage done to America’s reputation by the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, the camp opened by George W. Bush at a US base in Cuba to hold “enemy combatants” captured around the world.

For Le Bret, the conflict in Iraq was “an unfinished war, built on a lie” that ended up destabilising the whole region.

Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle East studies at Sciences-Po University in Paris, said it also squandered support for the US among its allies.

“The US enjoyed unprecedented international solidarity in its campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan],” he said.

“But after that campaign, which was crowned with success within a few weeks, the Neoconversatives imposed a strategy of a ‘global war on terror’ which reignited global jihad,” Filiu said.

Tai chi terror tactics 

The US presence in Iraq made it a magnet for militants, with Al Qaeda in Iraq becoming a major force in the post-war insurgency that later morphed into the Daesh terror group.

Daesh extremists, seeing power vacuums created through weak governance in Iraq and a civil war in Syria, grabbed territory in both countries after declaring their “caliphate” in 2014.

Spurred by social media and the forces of globalisation, they have since encouraged Muslims to take up arms against the West, which they see as an ideological enemy.

While conducting a campaign of mass murder and terror in territories under their control, they have spread their tentacles worldwide, inspiring or carrying out attacks in France, Germany, the United States, Turkey or Bangladesh.

“Daesh, or the so-called Islamic State, was born out of the alliance of two totalitarianisms, that of Al Qaeda and the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein,” Filiu said.

“Instead of taking the measure of this new threat, Barack Obama was for a long time in denial, allowing the emergence of a ‘terror caliphate’ that has spread around the world,” he argued.

Obama’s reticence to commit the US to a new battle in the Middle East reflected the caution of a nation scarred by Iraq, where thousands of US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians died during the post-invasion insurgency. 

Bin Laden’s son said 9/11 was aimed at setting up a grand showdown with America in Afghanistan where the Soviet army had been defeated by US-backed mujahideen.

“I was surprised the Americans took the bait”, Omar Bin Laden, one of 11 sons, told Rolling Stone magazine in 2010, a year before his father’s death at the hands of US special forces.

By forcing Washington out of its isolationism and luring it into Iraq, Bin Laden was using what historian Yuval Noah Harari calls the “tai-chi masters method”.

“The terrorists hope that even though they can barely dent the enemy’s material, power, fear and confusion will cause the enemy to misuse its strength,” the author of Sapiens, a history of humanity, wrote in The Guardian newspaper last year.

“Terrorists calculate that when the enraged enemy uses its massive power against them, it will raise a much more violent military and political storm than the terrorists themselves could ever create.”

LONDON — Britain's Interior Minister Amber Rudd said on Sunday she was looking at a work permits system to control migration from the European Union, responding to Brexit voters' demand for tighter border controls.

Although formal negotiations on leaving the EU have yet to begin, Britain is searching for a way to satisfy voters who backed leaving the EU because they wanted lower immigration and an end to open borders with the bloc, whilst meeting the needs of an economy in which some sectors depend on foreign labour.

"Work permits certainly has value," Rudd told the BBC, saying her department was examining immigration control systems and that no decisions had yet been made.

Britain currently has a visa system for non-EU nationals, but under EU rules citizens from within the 28-country bloc are free to live and work in Britain.

"What we're going to look at is how we can get the best for the economy, driving the numbers down but protecting the people who really add value to the economy," Rudd said.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Theresa May rejected a "points-based" system to screen immigrants — something Brexit campaigners promised to implement — stirring fears among some voters that her government was not taking a hard enough line on key issues like immigration.

But May has said the June 23 vote to leave the EU showed Britons wanted to control the movement of people from the bloc.

Rudd, a close ally of May, backed the government's long-standing target of bringing net annual migration into Britain, currently at 327,000, down below 100,000.

Migration controls are likely to form one of the most contentious negotiating points in talks with the EU on leaving the bloc, as Britain looks to tighten border controls without losing access the EU single market.

Britain's EU partners are so far adamant that it cannot enjoy full trade benefits unless it continues to provide free movement for EU nationals.

Rudd also refused to rule out the prospect that Britons might have to pay for permission to travel to the EU, commenting on a report in the Guardian newspaper that cited draft EU visa legislation which may affect post-Brexit Britain.

"I don't think it's particularly desirable, but we don't rule it out because we have to be allowed a free hand to get the best negotiations... it's a reminder that this is a two-way negotiation," she said.