An attack on the resort of Sousse in northern Tunisia on 26 June appears to have been aimed at western tourists, with as many as twenty-seven people killed. In Kuwait on the same day, around twenty-five people (and perhaps more) were killed in an assault on the Imam Sadiq mosque, a Shi'a centre. Islamic State may already have claimed responsibility for the Kuwait attack, and it is certainly the case that the movement has warned of an armed campaign during the fasting month of Ramadan. And near the French city of Lyon, an operation against a gas plant was contained after one person was decapitated.
It is unclear at present whether the Sousse, Kuwait and Lyon attacks are in any way coordinated. In the two years after 9/11 there were numerous attacks across the world that were blamed on the al-Qaida movement, with bombing and gun incidents in (for example) Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Spain. Many of these were in fact launched by local groups operating at a remove from al-Qaida, though often content to be linked with Osama bin Laden and the leadership.
For western states, the targeting of the Air Products plant outside Lyon will cause particular concern. Air Products Inc is a large transnational company with 21,000 employees in over fifty countries, based in the United States with headquarters at Allentown in Pennsylvania. If it turns out that the Lyons operation is in any way connected with Islamic State this will fit with a long-established pattern of action against US interests abroad predating 9/11.
