ISIS are quietly regrouping in Syria

[Meatpie]

Locals say ISIS are back in Raqqa

Attacks in Raqqa, the former capital of the Caliphate, in a series across an expanding area, and claiming a lethal toll, including the lives of Russian soldiers; the capture and executions of rival militia fighters; the seizure of territory with new bases being set up. Isis is emerging from the shadows and back onto the battlefields of Syria.

The return of the jihadists, once supposedly comprehensively defeated, is taking place amid rapidly changing dynamics.

The British newspaper The Independent has spoken to Syrian and Kurdish militias, and Western and Turkish officials who have provided a complex canvas of manoeuvrings by groups on both sides of the conflict: shifting alliances and betrayals which have helped the resurgence of the most bloodthirsty of Islamist terrorists.

There are believed to be between 8,000 to 10,000 Isis fighters remaining in Syria and Iraq. To put it in context, this is about 10 times the numbers it had left in Iraq – then under the name of Islamic State of Iraq – when US forces withdrew in 2011.

Within three years, however, rebranded, these Islamist fighters had captured swathes of territory in Syria and had almost reached the gates of Baghdad.

But it is the reappearance of Isis in Raqqa, the ‘capital’ whose fall was held up as evidence of its demise, which is a reminder - a highly symbolic one for the jihadists - that they have not gone away.

Around 20 SDF fighters have been killed in four separate attacks in Raqqa city and the nearby villages of Hamam Al-Turkman and Al-Russafah in the last month.

Some of these killings have been carried out by ‘sleeper cells’ which had infiltrated into the city over months.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-regrouping-islamic-state-assad-a8429446.html