Several Norwegian nationals who have joined the ISIS\u00a0group have assumed senior ranks in the terrorist group, Norway\u2019s intelligence agency says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that some of the Norwegians in ISIS have risen to middle-management functions,\u201d Dagbladet <\/em>newspaper quoted Lieutenant General Kjell Grandhagen, the head of the Norwegian Intelligence Service, as saying in an interview published on Thursday.<\/p>\n The Norwegian official identified Bastian Vasquez, a Norwegian Chilean from B\u00e6rum, as the most outstanding Norwegian commander of the terrorist\u00a0group who was killed last fall, adding that there are several other Norwegians in the senior ranks of the terrorist group.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are still several Norwegians who hold leadership positions in ISIS,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n According to estimates by the Norwegian Intelligence Service, as many as 150 Norwegians have joined the terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n The US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) said in its latest estimate on Tuesday that more than 20,000 individuals from around the world, including some Americans, have traveled to Syria to join the ISIS and other extremist groups.<\/p>\n Foreign militants from over 90 countries, including at least 3,400 people from Western states and more than 150 Americans, have travelled to Syria to join the terrorist groups there, the NCTC added.<\/p>\n Western governments have also grown increasingly concerned over the threat of radicalized militants returning from Syria and Iraq.<\/p>\n \u201cThe battlefields in Iraq and Syria provide foreign fighters with combat experience, weapons and explosives training, and access to terrorist networks that may be planning attacks which target the West,\u201d NCTC director Nicholas Rasmussen said.<\/p>\n ISIS\u00a0terrorists control some parts of Syria and Iraq. They are engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control. ISIS has terrorized and killed people of all communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians.<\/p>\n IA\/HJL\/MHB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several Norwegian nationals who have joined the ISIS\u00a0group have assumed senior ranks in the terrorist group, Norway\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":563,"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":[62,44,1],"tags":[24,14,15,148,11],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-eu","tag-isis","tag-militants","tag-norway","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Turks-ISIS.jpg?fit=650%2C365&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-h5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","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=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1060,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}