UN:
Up to 30,000 Islamic State group fighters left in Iraq, Syria
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Zaid Al-Obeidi / AFP | A picture taken on July 9, 2018 shows a view of the
Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, a year after the city was retaken by Iraqi government
forces from the IS group.
Latest update : 2018-08-14Between 20,000 and 30,000 Islamic State
fighters remain in Iraq and Syria despite the jihadist group's defeat and a
halt in the flow of foreigners joining its ranks, according to a UN report
released Monday.
The report by UN sanctions monitors
estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 IS jihadists were based
in Libya while some of the key operatives in the extremist group were
being relocated to Afghanistan.
Member-states told the monitors that the
total IS membership in Iraq and Syria was "between 20,000 and 30,000
individuals, roughly equally distributed between the two countries."
"Among these is still a significant
component of the many thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,"
said the report.
The sanctions monitoring team submits
independent reports every six months to the Security Council on the Islamic
State and Al-Qaeda, which are on the UN terrorist blacklist.
IS once controlled large swathes of
territory in Iraq and Syria, but last year it was driven out
of Mosuland Raqa -- the twin seats of power of the Sunni
extremist group.
By January 2018, IS was confined to small
pockets of territory in Syria, although the report said the group "showed
greater resilience" in eastern Syria.
IS "is still able to mount attacks
inside Syrian territory. It does not fully control any territory in Iraq, but
it remains active through sleeper cells" of agents hiding out in the
desert and elsewhere, said the report.
Some member-states raised concerns about
new IS cells emerging from the densely populated Rukban camp for internally
displaced persons in southern Syria, on the border with Jordan, where families
of IS fighters are now living.
Relocating
to Afghanistan
The flow of foreigners leaving IS
"remains lower than expected" and no other arena has emerged as a
favorite destination for foreign fighters, although "significant numbers
have made their way to Afghanistan", said the report.
There are an estimated 3,500-4,500 IS
fighters in Afghanistan and those numbers are increasing, according to the
report.
The flow of foreign fighters toward IS
"has essentially come to a halt," it added.
IS finances are drying up, with one
member-state estimating that its total reserves were "in the low hundreds
of millions" of US dollars. Some revenue from oil fields in northeastern
Syria continues to flow to IS.
IS commands only 250 to 500 members in
Yemen, compared to between 6,000 and 7,000 fighters for Al-Qaeda.
In the Sahel, the Islamic State in the
Greater Sahara is active mostly at the border between Mali and Niger but has
less of a foothold than the Al-Qaeda-linked Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam
wal-Muslimin (JMIN).
The Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab dominates in
Somalia but the report said that IS "has the strategic intent to expand to
central and southern Somalia". Some Somali IS fighters may choose to
relocate to Puntland, said the report.
(AFP)
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