ISIS Threat Depicts Vehicular Attack on Santa

Continuing a spree of threats in the run-up to Christmas and New Year’s Eve, an ISIS-allied media group depicted a vehicular attack on Santa.

The image circulated by al-Taqwa Media Foundation shows a red bus with the words “Islamic State” emblazoned beneath the front window and an ISIS flag plastered on the side.

It’s chasing Santa down a street. “The Christian holidays are approaching… and the lone lions are lying in wait,” reads the text on the image.

A week ago, the media group depicted a jihadist shooting Santa to death outside the Fenwick & Fenwick antique store in the Cotswolds village of Broadway, England. “O pigs of the cross, the day is near when your carnage will be gifts for your children,” the image said.

Al-Taqwa quickly seized on the Strasbourg, France, Christmas market attack to warn of more holiday assaults. Days after the Dec. 11 attack, al-Taqwa issued a stylized image of a suit-and-tie-clad gunmen firing a handgun in each hand, a black beanie on his head and a black mask over his nose and mouth marked with the ISIS flag. Lights on a building behind him spelled out “Magic Season.”

The poster included the hashtags in English and Arabic for “Soon in your holidays.”

“The era of surprises has begun,” read the text.

Late last month, al-Taqwa Media Foundation issued a threat poster online showing a sweatshirt-hooded jihadist holding a bloody cleaver looking down a Champs-Élysées clogged with emergency personnel and smoke rising from near the Arc de Triomphe.

“Wait what’s coming o enemies of Allah in France,” said the text on the image.

Days after that, the ISIS-supporting media group distributed an image depicting a capitol building — not the U.S. Capitol — in flames with a calamitous street scene including abandoned military vehicles and civilian cars, as the ISIS flag is raised and a quintet of armed, camouflage-clad jihadists stand before the building. In the image were four biohazard warning symbols: one on a nearby building, and three on concrete barricades separating the jihadists from their target.

“O Crusaders, you have realized the danger of the Islamic State. But you did not know the treatment, and you will not know the treatment, because there is no treatment!” read the text. “By fighting it, it gets stronger, and by leaving it, it blooms and stretches more.”

Other ISIS-aligned media groups have issued recent propaganda urging vehicle attacks connected to the holidays. A week ago, Al-Ansar Media Foundation depicted a bag of “Christmas Gifts” with images of a knife attack, vehicle attack and bomb coming out of the bag.

Most recently, Muharir al-Ansar issued an image of a hooded jihadist poised with a knife behind his back: “Coming soon: The Christian holidays are approaching… and the lone lions are lying in wait!”

Featuring Strasbourg attacker Chérif Chekatt in the new issue of their official weekly newsletter Thursday, ISIS told western jihadists to follow his lead in their home countries as “an unexploded ordnance in your land modifies a thousand operations in our territory.”

The terror group said that even if Chekatt was “killed a martyr… this will not be the last of the attacks… in Europe and America they will not be pleased.”

“We remind Muslims in the lands of kuffaar [disbelievers] to take advantage of the coming days,” ISIS continued. “There are many gatherings of infidels in their festivals… take your war to the Crusaders.”