“Islamic State fighters working in Singapore carried out a Zika virus attack last month by infecting themselves and spreading the disease in the heartlands of Singapore targeting populated areas,” Aamaaq news agency said on its Telegram channel.
Health workers battling Zika in Singapore
Isis’ claim of responsibility was impossible to verify but Indonesian police previously said they believed militants had been “imitating” the November attacks in Paris in Southeast Asia targeting densely populated areas.
If the claim is true, then it marked the first successful attack of any kind by the Isis in the island state, and possibly the first time the Isis had used biological warfare in their fight against the "Crusader Alliance".
Singapore has been identified as a possible target for attack by a Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posting on social media, a report in May said.
It is not the first time Singapore has been cited by radicals. Last year, extremist English-language magazine Resurgence cited the Phillip Channel and Sembawang Naval Base in a piece on how militants could attack at sea.
The terror threat facing Singapore took on a more menacing face last month after six militants were arrested in Batam.
Police said their leader had been planning a rocket attack on Marina Bay together with a Syrian-based Indonesian ISIS militant. The six men in Batam had been kept under watch for a while before they were arrested by Indonesian police in an early-morning raid.
Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said the six "were thinking of attacking Marina Bay with rockets", and "this shows how our enemies are thinking of different ways of attacking us".
He drew a parallel with Molenbeek, the Belgian town from which terrorists planned their assault on Paris last November and, in a series of coordinated attacks, killed 130 people. "There are several possible Molenbeeks around us from which attacks can be launched on Singapore. These include the Riau Islands," he said.
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