Islamic State's Driverless Car Bomb PHOTO: SKY NEWS
A footage obtained by Sky News takes us inside a “Jihadi university” in Syria where scientists and weapons experts train militants to carry out sophisticated attacks in Europe, while also modifying weapons systems capable of targeting passenger jets and military aircraft.
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The terror group, which claimed the deadly Paris attacks last year, has fitted the cars with mannequins with self-regulating thermostats to produce the heat signature of humans, allowing the car bombs to evade sophisticated scanning machines that protect military and government buildings in the West.
PHOTO: SKY NEWSThe footage came to surface after an IS trainer with more than eight hours of unedited training videos was captured by Free Syrian Army (FSA) as he headed north through Turkey towards Europe. The FSA later passed on the videos to Sky News.
The videos show trainees from a range of countries, including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Egypt and Pakistan, being given training courses using science labs and facilities based around the former Equestrian Centre in Raqqa, Syria.
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The trainees are taught to adapt the electronic parts of scrap cars to make the remote controlled cars work using sophisticated un-jammable radio sets as well as lessons on how to assemble the mannequins to appear like human drivers.
PHOTO: SKY NEWSAccording to Sky News, IS scientists have stunned western weapons experts by manufacturing a homemade thermal battery for surface-to-air missiles which is considered a virtually impossible feat for terror groups working without a military infrastructure.
Further, the footage shows that IS can now recommission thousands of missiles which were earlier considered to have been redundant through old age. Also, IS is now capable of using heat-seeking warheads to attack passenger and military aircraft which are 99% accurate once locked on.
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Major Chris Hunter, a former bomb technician in the special forces and adviser to the British military, said he was shocked at some of the developments revealed in the videos.
"I think this is one of the most significant intelligence finds in terms of Daesh. What we've seen with their typical propaganda videos is they're very, very high quality. They're designed, they're produced to inspire people and prospectively touch the nerves of anybody who is viewing them; they're done in a very specific way,” he said.
PHOTO: SKY NEWS"With this training footage it's very clearly purely designed to pass on information - to pass on the progress in the research and development areas - and it gives us a very good insight into where they are now, what they're aspiring to do and crucially the diversity of the types of threats we might face. So I would say it's an intel gold mine," he added.
In one of the videos, a man walks a camera through a store comprising explosive materials such as TNT, improvised missiles and plastic explosives, while explaining how the materials can all be used to make bombs if they have obtained the correct fuses.
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An IS defector confirmed to Sky News that a top secret training programme was going on in Raqqa and that it was designed for attacks in Europe. "Videoing and documenting this training programme was meant for Europe to cause huge damage. If it was meant internally (inside Syria) they could send someone to set an explosive device or wire a car as they are able to do this (openly),” he said.
"But doing such a programme and documenting it was meant to target a large number of people and in more than one location, of course it wasn't meant either for Syria or Iraq," he added.
Sky News alerted the British government, which responded with the statement, "Daesh will use all measures at their disposal to cause harm, and Britain will never be cowed by such terrorists. Our values are so much stronger than theirs. It will take time but this is an organisation that is losing territory and will be defeated."
Watch the video here:
This article originally appeared on Sky News.
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