When a married couple killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, they committed the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.
The assault also underscored an unsettling reality: ISIS has morphed from a scourge affecting Iraq and Syria to a threat to people around the world.
Since declaring its caliphate in June 2014, the self-proclaimed Islamic State has conducted or inspired at least 50 terrorist attacks in 18 countries that have killed 1,100 people and injured more than 1,700 others.
One San Bernardino killer pledged allegiance to the ISIS leader, investigators say. And ISIS hailed the attackers as “martyrs” and “supporters.”
Did ISIS actually order the attack? Did its ideology inspire the killers?
It can be difficult at times to divine the precise role that international terrorists play in this or that attack. The person who killed four U.S. Marines and a sailor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015, for example, was “motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda,” FBI Director James Comey says, though he added that it’s hard to say which terrorist group motivated the killer.
Yet one thing is clear: The deadly tentacles of ISIS have spread quickly, from the terrorist group’s epicenter in parts of Iraq and Syria to points around the globe.
Here’s a look at terrorist attacks outside Iraq and Syria believed to have been inspired or conducted by ISIS or its regional affiliates, along with context about the known connections to ISIS:
NORTH AMERICA
October 20, 2014 – Martin Rouleau-Couture runs over two soldiers, killing one, outside a government office in Saint-Jean-sur-Richilieu, Quebec. Rouleau-Couture had converted to Islam and expressed support for ISIS online. He may have been responding to ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani’s call to arms, according to the Institute for the Study of War. ISIS mentioned Rouleau-Couture in its English-language magazine Dabiq, claiming the attack resulted from Adnani’s call. It also included a picture of Rouleau-Couture in the magazine. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
October 22, 2014 – Gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau opens fire at Canada’s National War Memorial and Parliament Hill in Ottawa, killing army reservist Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. Zehaf-Bibeau is killed by House of Commons Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers. Two others, including a security guard, are injured. ISIS mentioned Zehaf-Bibeau in Dabiq, claiming that the attack was the “direct result of (Adnani’s) call to action,” the Institute for the Study of War reported. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
October 23, 2014 – A man with a hatchet attacks four police officers in New York. Police said the attacker, a U.S. citizen named Zale Thompson, was self-radicalized. Thompson had searched online for information on beheadings, al Qaeda, ISIS and al Shabaab, according to police. ISIS mentioned Thompson in Dabiq, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
May 3, 2015 – Two men open fire outside a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in a Dallas suburb. The gunmen, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, wound a security guard before police shoot and kill them. Simpson linked himself to ISIS in a tweet posted before the attack, according to a federal law enforcement source.
The keynote speaker at the event was right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who was on an al Qaeda hit list. At least one of the gunmen appeared to have been in contact with an ISIS operative in Syria via social media. ISIS claimed responsibility, describing the attackers as “soldiers of the caliphate,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The institute described the attack as “ISIS-inspired,” and U.S. officials said the group probably was being “opportunistic” in claiming responsibility. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
December 2, 2015 – Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, shoot 14 people to death and injure 21 others at a gathering of local government health workers in San Bernardino, California. Malik and Farook are gunned down in a shootout with law enforcement.
Malik pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook, three U.S. officials familiar with the investigation told CNN.
The husband-and-wife team had developed extremist views as early as 2013, a time that predates the rise of ISIS, the FBI’s Comey has said. And Farook tried to contact other terrorist groups, a senior law enforcement official said.
“Individuals inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and with links to al Qaeda conducted the terrorist attack,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. “This attack was the first al Qaeda- or ISIS-related in the U.S. by a skilled shooter team using both guns and explosives.” The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
January 8, 2016 – A 30-year-old man confesses to shooting a Philadelphia police officer in the name of the “Islamic State,” presumably referring to the terrorist group ISIS, according to officials. Officer Jesse Hartnett was hit three times and suffered “some very serious injuries that will require multiple surgeries,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said. Despite being seriously injured, Hartnett got out of his patrol car and shot the assailant, who later was apprehended by other officers, Ross said. Police Capt. James Clarke told CNN the suspect said to investigators: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State and that’s why I did what I did.” The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
EUROPE
May 24, 2014 –Three people are killed and another seriously injured in a shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. The suspect was identified as Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old Frenchman from Roubaix in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France. Nemmouche, who had spent a year in Syria, is a radicalized Islamist, according to the chief prosecutor of Paris.
Nemmouche was arrested with a Kalashnikov, a handgun, an audio recording claiming responsibility and a white sheet emblazoned with the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
December 20, 2014 – A man stabs three police officers in the French city of Tours. The attacker was a 20-year-old French citizen who was born in Burundi. He was shot dead by police. CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank reported that the attacker had posted the ISIS flag on his Facebook page. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
January 9, 2015 – Amedy Coulibaly is killed during a police rescue operation to end his siege at a kosher grocery store in Paris. Authorities say he killed four hostages. He allegedly shot a Paris policewoman the previous day. Coulibaly had pledged his allegiance to ISIS in a video made before the attack. He was a friend of Said and Cherif Kouachi, who killed 12 people two days earlier in an attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack at Charlie Hebdo.
Pro-ISIS sources circulated a video in which Coulibaly pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in front of an ISIS flag, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Investigators found ISIS flags, automatic weapons, detonators and cash in an apartment rented by Coulibaly outside Paris. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
February 14, 2015 – A gunman attacks a free speech forum featuring a controversial cartoonist and then fires shots near a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark, killing two people and wounding five police officers. Police shoot and kill him. The man swore fidelity to al-Baghdadi before the shooting spree in a posting made on what was apparently his Facebook page. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
June 26, 2015 — A man on France’s terror watch list shoots selfies with the decapitated body of his boss before launching an attempted suicide attack at a U.S.-owned chemical factory near Lyon in southeastern France. Photos made with suspect Yassin Salhi’s phone may have been intended to become part of a social media propaganda campaign for ISIS, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins.
The head was tied to the factory’s fence, along with two flags bearing “the Islamist profession of faith,” authorities said.
“We can note that this perfectly matches ISIS’ watchword, which regularly calls for committing terrorist attacks on the French territory, and to precisely slit the throats of the nonbelievers,” Molins said. “The beheading also precisely recalls this terrorist organization’s modus operandi.” The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
November 13, 2015 – A series of terror attacks in Paris kills at least 130 people and wounds more than 350 others. The attackers, armed with assault rifles and explosives, target six locations across the city — including a soccer match as France plays world champion Germany and the Bataclan concert hall, where most of the fatalities occur. In an online statement distributed by supporters, ISIS said eight militants wearing explosive belts and armed with machine guns attacked precisely selected areas in the French capital. The Institute for the Study of War described the attacks as the terror group’s “most sophisticated assault in the West to date.” It was the worst violence in France since World War II. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
December 5, 2015 – A 29-year-old man attacks another man in the Leytonstone Underground station in London, England. He cut the man’s throat in a “sawing motion,” prosecutors said. The attacker was heard to shout, “This is for Syria, my Muslim brothers.” Britain’s Press Association said his cell phone contained images and flags associated with ISIS. Police said they were investigating the incident as a terrorist offense. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
September 20 or 21, 2014 – French citizen Herve Gourdel is abducted in the Tizi Ouzou region of Algeria, east of Algiers. An online video days later shows militants beheading him and pledging loyalty to ISIS. In the video, armed men claim to belong to Islamist militant group Jund al-Khilafah — or Soldiers of the Caliphate — in Algeria. They pledge allegiance to ISIS leader al-Baghdadi. Jund al-Khilafah “stated in a video released on September 22 that the kidnapping was their fulfilling the order of IS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-‘Adnani to attack citizens of countries participating in the U.S.-led coalition against the IS,” according to INSITE on Terrorism, a blog of the SITE Intelligence Group. ISIS does not acknowledge the group as an affiliate, and little is heard from the group after Gourdel’s killing. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
January 27, 2015 – An attack on the luxury Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli, Libya, kills at least 10 people. The Libyan branch of ISIS claims responsibility for the assault, which killed five foreigners, including David Berry, an American security contractor.
“The attack was an inflection in ISIS’s Libya campaign, aimed at securing the cooperation of Islamist rebel groups in western Libya while slowly expanding ISIS’s stronghold in the east,” the Institute for the Study of War reported. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
January 29, 2015 – Car bombs and mortar rounds target army and police positions in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 26 and wounding nearly 40 others. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, a militant group that has pledged allegiance to ISIS, said via Twitter that it was behind the attacks. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
February 15, 2015 – ISIS releases a video it says shows the beheadings on a Libyan beach of 21 Coptic Christians who had been kidnapped in Egypt. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
February 20, 2015 – Three simultaneous suicide car bomb attacks kill at least 30 people and injure more than 40 others in Gobba, Libya. The Libyan branch of ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
March 18, 2015 – A terrorist attack on the landmark Bardo Museum in Tunis, Tunisia, leaves 23 dead, including many foreign tourists. Another 36 people are hospitalized, and eight others are treated and released. The siege ends when security forces kill two of the attackers. Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi later confirmed that a third person took part in the museum attack and got away.
ISIS claimed responsibility. “The suicide gunmen attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis … demonstrates how the confluence of ISIS and al-Qaeda elements in North Africa may lead to emergent threats in the region,” the Institute for the Study of War says.
“While both groups recruit heavily from Tunisia, the al-Qaeda affiliated Uqba Ibn Nafaa Brigade is the country’s strongest operational extremist group. However, the Bardo attack diverged from Uqba’s usual pattern of attacking security forces near its mountainous stronghold in western Tunisia, indicating that ISIS-linked elements likely played some role in the operation.” The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
March 20, 2015 – Terrorists bomb two mosques in Sanaa, Yemen, killing 137 and wounding 357. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
April 2015 – A Syrian teacher, identified as 39-year-old Shuja Gannun, is killed in Kahramanmaras, in southern Turkey. ISIS later said it had killed him, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks terrorist activity. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
April 12, 2015 – Militants aligned with ISIS take responsibility for attacks that killed at least 12 people in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. At least 45 people were injured. The assaults targeted a police station, a checkpoint and a highway. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an ISIS affiliate, claimed responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
April 19, 2015 – ISIS’ media arm releases a video of operatives beheading two groups of prisoners, believed to include at least 30 Ethiopian Christians, at different locations in Libya. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one if its affiliates.
May 22, 2015 – A suicide bomber kills 21 people at the Imam Ali mosque in Qudayh, Saudi Arabia. ISIS claims responsibility. ISIS affiliates launched the attack and others “in order to increase sectarian tension and undermine the Saudi-led Arab coalition,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
Late May 2015 – A man disguised as a woman kills three people when he blows himself up outside a mosque in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. ISIS claimed responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
June 26, 2015 – A gunman kills at least 38 people and wounds about 40 others in an attack on a seaside resort in Sousse, Tunisia. ISIS claimed responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
June 26, 2015 – A bomb blast tears through the Imam Sadiq mosque during Friday prayers in Kuwait City, Kuwait, killing 27 people and wounding 227 others. ISIS claims responsibility for the suicide bombing. The assault was carried out by ISIS affiliate Wilayat Najd, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
June 29, 2015 — A car bomb in Sanaa, Yemen, injures at least 35 people, two critically. ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
July 1, 2015 – ISIS launches simultaneous attacks on five Egyptian military checkpoints in North Sinai, reportedly killing 17 Egyptian soldiers and injuring 30 others. According to the Egyptian military, 100 terrorists were killed. “ISIS likely seeks to reduce Egyptian security force positions in the Sinai in order to increase its freedom of maneuver as it escalates to more aggressive campaigns, potentially involving international targets such as the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) based in Sinai,” the Institute for the Study of War reported. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
July 11, 2015 — A car bomb explodes outside the Italian Consulate in Cairo, killing at least one person and injuring nine others. Various social media accounts belonging to ISIS supporters share a statement they say is from the terror group, claiming responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
July 20, 2015 — A suicide bomber kills more than 30 people in Suruc, Turkey, near the border with Syria. At least 100 others were wounded. Turkish authorities said they believed ISIS played a role. The Institute for the Study of War described the attacker as a “suspected ISIS member.” The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
July 23, 2015 — At least five ISIS militants in northern Syria approach the border and fire on a Turkish border unit, killing a soldier and wounding two others, the Turkish military says. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
August 6, 2015 – An explosion rips through a mosque in the Asir region of southwestern Saudi Arabia, killing at least 13 people and injuring nine others. ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
August 12, 2015 – Images published online appear to show the body of Tomislav Salopek, a Croatian national, officials from various countries and the SITE Intelligence Group say. He is believed to have been beheaded. A group claiming to be ISIS’ branch in the Sinai Peninsula had threatened to kill Salopek, who was abducted in Egypt, if Egypt didn’t release female Muslim prisoners. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
September 2, 2015 — At least 28 people are killed and dozens more wounded in two suicide bombings at the al-Moayyad mosque in Sanaa, Yemen. ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
September 24, 2015 – A bomb blast at the Al Bilaili mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, kills at least 29 people. ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
October 6, 2015 – Explosions rock a hotel in southern Yemen that houses members of deposed President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi’s government. At least 15 people are reported killed. ISIS claims responsibility, though a Yemeni government minister blames Houthi rebels. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
October 10, 2015 – Two bombs explode at a peace rally in Ankara,Turkey, killing at least 97 people and wounding nearly 250 others. The Turkish Prime Minister later said investigators suspected ISIS. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
October 16, 2015 – An ISIS affiliate in Saudi Arabia claims its first attack, opening fire on a Shia mosque in Saihat, Saudi Arabia. The new affiliate may consist of Bahraini militants who intend to launch attacks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack killed at least five people, the Saudi Press Agency reports. It is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
October 30, 2015 — Two Syrian activists in Turkey, Ibrahim Abd al-Qader and Fares Hamadi, are found dead, with their throats slashed, in the southeastern Turkish town of Sanliurfa. Qader was one of the founding members of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group that has documented ISIS atrocities in Syria. Supporters of ISIS were reported to have published a video online claiming responsibility, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
October 31, 2015 – A bomb destroys a Russian passenger plane flying over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, killing 224 people. An ISIS affiliate in the Sinai claimed responsibility for bombing the aircraft and said it acted in retaliation for Russian airstrikes in Syria, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
November 12, 2015 – Suicide bombers blow themselves up in Beirut, Lebanon, killing at least 43 people and injuring 239 others. A would-be suicide bomber who survived told investigators that he was an ISIS recruit, a Lebanese security source said. He told authorities that he and three other attackers arrived in Lebanon from Syria, the source said. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
November 24, 2015 — A bomb hits a bus carrying members of the Tunisian presidential guard in Tunis, Tunisia, killing 12 people. ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
December 6, 2015 – A car bomb explosion kills the governor of the major Yemeni city of Aden and six bodyguards. ISIS claims responsibility. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
ASIA AND AUSTRALIA
September 18, 2014 – Abdul Numan Haider, 18, is shot dead after stabbing two counterterrorism officers outside a Melbourne police station. Haider’s family had moved to Australia from Afghanistan. ISIS mentioned Haider by name in its English-language magazine Dabiq, claiming that his attack was the “direct result of the Shaykh (Adnani)’s call to action,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
December 15, 2014 – A gunman takes 17 hostages in a cafe in Sydney. Police storm the cafe after 16 hours. Two hostages are killed. So is the gunman. Other people are injured, including a police officer who suffers a wound to the face from gunshot pellets. The gunman is identified as Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born refugee who was granted political asylum in Australia in 2001. During the siege, Monis demanded the delivery of an ISIS flag, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The hostage-taker “sought to cloak his actions with the symbolism of the (ISIS) death cult,” said Tony Abbott, the prime minister at the time. The U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism described Monis as an “ISIL sympathizer.” The attack is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
April 18, 2015 – A suicide bomber on a motorbike blows himself up in front of a bank in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, killing at least 33 people and injuring more than 100 others. “On April 18, local media received text messages allegedly from Shahidullah Shahid, a key figure in the establishment of Wilayat Khorasan, claiming responsibility on behalf of ISIS for the attack,” the Institute for the Study of War reported. Wilayat Khorasan is the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The attack is believed to have been conducted by ISIS or one of its affiliates.
September 28, 2015 – ISIS claims responsibility for gunning down an Italian citizen, Cesare Tavella, 51, who was jogging home in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka after swimming at the American International School’s pool. Police later arrested four Bangladeshi citizens in Tavella’s killing. Muntashirul Islam, Dhaka’s police commissioner, described the suspects as contract killers hired by a person they referred to as “Big Brother” to kill a foreigner, preferably with “white skin”; he said none of the four or “Big Brother” is believed to have direct ties to ISIS.
Bangladesh experienced several violent acts inspired by extremists in 2015; this is the first for which ISIS claimed responsibility. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh has said that ISIS is not a presence in Bangladesh and that domestic factors were the motivation for people who have killed bloggers and foreign nationals in the country, according to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the national news agency of Bangladesh. The attack may have been inspired by ISIS.
October 3, 2015 – Hoshi Kunio, a 65-year-old man from Japan, is shot and killed by assailants in a village in the district of Rangpur, Bangladesh. ISIS claims responsibility in its online magazine, according to the SITE terrorist-monitoring organization. Police blame the killing on the banned extremist group Jama’atul Mujaheedin Bangladesh, according to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha.The attack may have been inspired by ISIS.
October 24, 2015 – A bomb explodes during a Shiite procession near a place of worship in Dhaka, Bangladesh. One person is killed and 60 others are hurt, according to the Dhaka Tribune. A group affiliated with ISIS claims responsibility, according to the SITE terrorist-monitoring organization. The attack may have been inspired by ISIS.
November 26, 2015 – Gunmen burst into a Shiite mosque in Bangladesh and open fire, killing one person and wounding three others. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement distributed online by supporters. Mohammad Asaduzzaman, police superintendent in the Bogra district of northern Bangladesh, said investigators were aware of the claim but couldn’t verify it. The attack may have been inspired by ISIS.