ISIS preacher: Paris attack was revenge, more to come

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Islamic State’s (ISIS) official preacher in Mosul warned Friday that the attack on a French magazine should become a lesson to anti-Muslim countries.

“What happened in France is a lesson to any country that participates in the killing and bombing of the Islamic State,” Abu Asaad al-Ansari, who also serves as an ISIS mouthpiece, said during a Friday prayers sermon. “All countries that have contributed to the bombing of Sunni land will suffer the revenge of the Islamic State.”

Al-Ansari warned that his group will take its holy war to Europe.

“The Islamic State is key to the liberation of every corrupt and infidel country,” he told an audience of worshippers that included ISIS officials and ordinary civilians at the al-Rahman mosque. “We will start in the Middle East then Europe and other countries. We will take the war to countries where they don’t know who we are.”

A Rudaw correspondent inside Mosul reported that part of al-Ansari’s sermon was dedicated to the latest fighting between ISIS militants and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

He said:  “We will take back some of the land of the Islamic State that we lost because some traitors withdrew from them and we executed them,” said al-Ansari.

“Taking of our land by the Yezidis and nonbelievers is a shameful stain (on ISIS) and we will take back the land soon,” he vowed.

The ISIS preacher claimed that people from the Christian and Shabak minorities, taken by the group, “are safe and treated well.”

“In the coming few days we will release a number of religious figures of other religious minorities, so that everyone knows how the Islamic State treats others,” he said.