Video Islamic State's strikes in Paris a 'game-changer'

The weekend's terrorist attacks in Paris by the so-called Islamic State have raised new questions over the group's capabilities and its threat to global security.

On Friday evening, a group of Islamist terrorists targeted Parisians in a series of coordinated gun and bomb attacks. Bars and restaurants, a concert hall and the Stade de France were the site of shootings and explosions in which most of the attackers detonated suicide belts.

The attacks left 129 dead and hundreds injured.

Speaking to French radio station RTL Monday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said French intelligence services had prevented several terrorist attacks since the summer and that police knew other attacks were being prepared in France as well as in the rest of Europe. He added that 150 raids had been carried out across France since Friday night.

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Analysts are viewing the attacks as a "game-changer" for Europe as the Islamist group, which holds swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, has shown itself to be able to conduct a well-planned attack so far from its base.
Game-changer

The Paris attacks show that the Islamic State is stepping up its global activities, analysts say.

"The 13 November terrorist attacks in Paris appear to mark a major change of strategy by Islamic State, now determined to, and seemingly capable of, carrying the fight against 'the enemy' beyond its self-proclaimed caliphate and its immediate neighborhood," Alastair Newton, head of Alavan Business Advisory, said in a note Monday.

"Previously, the general consensus was that, although al Qa'ida (AQ) is committed to 'exporting' terrorism, IS was focused purely on its caliphate and the immediate neighborhood," Newton, a former senior political analyst at Nomura, added.


All in all, Newton said, the attacks appeared to amount to "a quantum jump in the geographical spread of the threat posed directly by IS' central command, rather than just its affiliates and sympathizers."

France responded at the weekend by launching airstrikes against IS targets in Syria and a manhunt has begun in Europe for men suspected of aiding the attackers, who are believed to have been based in Belgium and helped by French accomplices.
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