The Slatest

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Texas Attack via Radio Broadcast

Investigators near the car used by two gunmen in Garland, Texas. No explosives were ultimately found in the vehicle, but several suspicious items inside it were destroyed as a precautionary measure.

Rex Curry/Reuters

An ISIS spokesman on the group’s radio channel claimed responsibility for Sunday’s unsuccessful attack on a “Muhammad Cartoon Contest” in Garland, Texas, outlets including CNN report:

In a broadcast on its official radio channel Tuesday, the group said two Al Khilafa soldiers opened fire outside the event in Garland, a Dallas suburb. Al Khilafa is how ISIS refers to its soldiers.

The gunmen, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, wounded a security guard before police shot and killed them.

The ISIS radio announcer also referred to Simpson and Soofi as the terror group’s “brothers.”

U.S. authorities have not as of yet released or discussed any evidence that Simpson and Soofi had formal ties to ISIS or that the attack was planned or coordinated by ISIS figures—as the AP puts it, the terror group may be “opportunistically claiming the attack as its own” retroactively. Simpson did send a tweet not long before the shooting alluding to “the leader of the faithful,” which could be a reference to self-appointed ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.