Report: Islamic State Regrouping in Iraq, Staging Attacks

Hundreds of Islamic State terrorists have fled Syria for Iraq since the beginning of the year, and have regrouped to the point of being able to carry out attacks, the Washington Post reported. “Look at where they’re hiding. It’s deserts. It’s caves. It’s places no one can ever fully control,” the article quoted an Iraqi army officer as saying. “How many units would we need to secure every inch? Too many.” ISIS’s apparent resurgence comes shortly after a US-led coalition of some 70 countries decimated its “caliphate,” which was declared in 2014 when the terror group controlled swaths of territory across Iraq and Syria that was virtually equal in size to the United Kingdom. At the time, ISIS ruled major Iraqi cities, such as Mosul and Tikrit, under strict Islamic law, and had massacred thousands of Yazidis in and around Sinjar, many of whom remain unaccounted for. According to the Post, the ISIS fighters have been able to penetrate western Iraq’s Anbar Province, located on the border with Syria, by crossing the Euphrates River, close to where the terror group lost its last stronghold of Baghouz in March. Experts cited in the report noted that any renewed low-level insurgency could wreak havoc on communities still scarred by living under ISIS tyranny.