{"id":1032,"date":"2015-02-11T08:15:11","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T08:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=1032"},"modified":"2015-02-11T08:22:40","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T08:22:40","slug":"20000-foreign-fighters-have-joined-isis-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/20000-foreign-fighters-have-joined-isis-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"20,000 foreign fighters have joined ISIS: Reports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Some 20,000 foreign fighters \u2013 including at least 3,400 Westerners \u2013 have joined the Islamic State&#8217;s cause and are now fighting on the frontline in Iraq and Syria, according to estimates in a number of testimonies by American intelligence officials.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Of those 3,400 Islamic State (IS, ISIS) fighters coming from the Western world, as many as 150 Americans may have reached the battlefield, officials told the House Homeland Security Committee in testimonies prepared for delivery on Wednesday, according to AP. Others were arrested en route to the war zones, while some died in the area.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, Nick Rasmussen, said the number of foreign fighters joining the jihadists in Syria and Iraq is growing at an unprecedented rate in comparison to foreign militants who went to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia in the past 20 years. The overall estimate of 20,000 foreigners in IS&#8217;s army has been revised from 19,000, according to Rasmussen\u2019s prepared testimony.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>Earlier this week <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ISIS?src=hash\">#ISIS<\/a> also entered the village Ras El-Hilal in Derna district and raised its flag: <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/rGbxtD9VJm\">pic.twitter.com\/rGbxtD9VJm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 TheMaghrebiNote (@MaghrebiNote) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MaghrebiNote\/status\/564554294540902401\">February 8, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The chairman of the committee, Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, claimed that according to agencies, the Islamic caliphate is <em>\u201cthe largest convergence of Islamist terrorists in world history.\u201d<\/em>Sustained bombing by the American coalition has not stopped the inflow, he noted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In another testimony prepared for Wednesday, the Homeland Security Department\u2019s intelligence chief, Francis X. Taylor, said Washington is <em>\u201cunaware of any specific, credible imminent threat to the Homeland.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI, will brief the lawmakers that last month the Islamic State released a video encouraging \u201clone wolf\u201d radicals \u2013 those who have not yet traveled to Syria or Iraq \u2013 to instead attack soldiers, police, and intelligence officers in Western countries, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cOnce in Syria, it is very difficult to discern what happens there,<\/em>\u201d according to Steinbach&#8217;s testimony.<em>\u201cThis lack of clarity remains troubling.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yet the flow of fighters \u2013 who hail from some 90 countries \u2013 is irregular, another official who spoke on condition of anonymity told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Meanwhile, the White House wants Congress to authorize the US military to fight the Islamic State over the next three years, and is reportedly planning to announce a formal request on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">RT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some 20,000 foreign fighters \u2013 including at least 3,400 Westerners \u2013 have joined the Islamic State&#8217;s cause [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[4,14,15,13,11],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-iraq","tag-isis","tag-militants","tag-syria","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/ISIS-Raqqa.jpg?fit=670%2C357&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-gE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}