On August 23, the Sri Lankan government ended a four-month-long state of emergency that was declared after multiple suicide bombings inspired by the Islamic State (IS) rocked the South Asian nation (Colombo Page, August 23).  Over 250 people died and scores were injured when on April 21, Easter Sunday, suicide bombers targeted popular hotels and churches in the capital city of Colombo, Dehiwala, Negombo (on the East Coast), and Batticoloa (on the West Coast).

On July 31, news of Hamza bin Laden’s death surfaced with only partial comment from U.S. intelligence officials and al-Qaeda media sources (Dawn [Karachi], August 1). The original report citing unnamed U.S. officials did not confirm the date, place or circumstances that led to the death of the chosen son of Osama bin Laden, who was touted as the “crown prince of jihad” and future leader of al-Qaeda.

On February 14 (2019), over 40 Indian paramilitary force personnel belonging to Central Reserve Police Force were killed near Awantipora in Pulwama district, when a Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) fidayeen (suicide) squad member Adil Ahmed Dar ambushed the security convoy with an explosives-laden vehicle (VBIED), or simply put, with a car bomb. While the use of a car bomb in itself is not new in the Kashmir region, but the terrorist outfit led by Masood Azhar used this method after a gap of almost 14 years.

China is increasingly facing transnational jihadist threats as a result of the long-standing plight of its ethnic Uighur Muslim citizens, who are mostly concentrated in the country’s northwestern region of Xinjiang (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region). Amid mounting Western criticism of China’s handling of its minorities in Xinjiang, especially over the last couple years, there has been a puzzling lack of outcry from the larger Muslim world.

Hizbul Mujahideen’s (HM) newly recruited commander, Burhan-ud-Din Muzaffar Wani, has taken Kashmir’s militant landscape by storm by using his social media skills and guns. One of his recent photographs featured the 21-year-old commander surrounded by at least ten other militants of roughly the same age carrying guns; the image went viral on social media applications (such as Facebook and WhatsApp) and is considered to have marked a new phase of the Kashmir conflict. In an audiovisual message, Wani also encouraged disaffected Kashmiri youths to join the ongoing militancy.

In the weeks following the deadly serial bombings in Indian capital, New Delhi in October last year, the Union Home department in a revealing disclosure informed a hitherto unknown Inquilabi militant outfit which shouldered the responsibility of Delhi blasts has been active in Southern parts of the country and associated with the outlawed 'Student Islamic Movement of India' (hereafter SIMI), the radical outlawed Muslim student outfit.