Less than a week before the Orlando terrorist assaults, a group supporting the Islamic State said they planned to attack nearly 8,000 people across the United States, including almost 650 in Florida alone — and provided a list of those it hoped to kill.
The United Cyber Caliphate issued its plans on June 6 on the messaging app Telegram and was discovered by
Vocativ.com.
The group's statement was written in both English and Arabic — and called on supporters to "follow" those on the list and "kill them strongly to take revenge for Muslims."
According to Vocativ, most of the names and addresses listed appeared to be those of people living in the United States, Australia, and Canada.
The list included 7,848 people identified as being in the U.S.
Here is the list's breakdown, Vocativ reports:
- 1,445 in California.
- 643 in Florida.
- 341 in Washington, D.C.
- 333 in Texas.
- 331 in Illinois.
- 290 in New York.
In addition, 312 names and addresses apparently belong to people living in Canada, and 69 possibly in Australia.
Thirty-nine more people live in the U.K., while the remainder have addresses around the world, including Belgium, Brazil, China, Estonia, France, Germany and Greece.
In the Orlando shooting, Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Fla., entered the Pulse nightclub about 2 a.m. Sunday and began shooting. He fatally shot 49 people and at least 53 others before he was killed by a police SWAT team.
Mateen was born in New York — and he was a U.S. citizen whose parents were from Afghanistan. He has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
In recent years, the United Cyber Caliphate reportedly has hacked the U.S. Central Command, 54,000 Twitter accounts — and has threatened President Barack Obama, reports
WPEC-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla.
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