The U.S. military's European Command said Tuesday it has ordered its
troops to avoid wearing their uniforms when off base, and to ensure the
security settings and geolocation functions on their social media pages
aren't "overly revealing."
EUCOM spokesman Navy
Capt. Greg Hicks would not say what prompted the new directive for the
roughly 70,000 U.S. personnel serving in Europe. The order, issued Nov.
10, comes after high-profile attacks on soldiers of American allies
Britain and Canada in their home countries.
"We
continually assess threats to our forces with and alongside our host
nation counterparts, and take appropriate measures based on those
assessments," Hicks said in an e-mailed statement to The Associated
Press. "We will not get into the specifics of those threats nor the
assessments."
EUCOM said it did not know whether other American commands had issued similar directives.
The order came two days before three American sailors were assaulted in Istanbul, Turkey, near where their warship was docked. Protesters
shouted "Yankee, go home!" and other slogans, and threw red paint at
the sailors, who were not in uniform. They also briefly succeeded in
putting white sacks over the sailors' heads.
Last month, a gunman shot and killed a soldier in Ottawa in an attack Prime Minister Stephen Harper called an act of terrorism. Two
days before that, a man authorities said was inspired by the Islamic
State extremist group ran over two soldiers in a parking lot in Quebec,
killing one and injuring the other before being shot to death by police. The attacks raised fears Canada was suffering reprisals for joining the U.S.-led air campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria.
Last
year in the London suburb of Woolwich, two Islamic extremists ran a
British solder down in a car, then stabbed and hacked him to death in
public. One of the men accused in the crime has said they choose the
first soldier they spotted, and considered him a "fair target."
