Syria
A member of the SDF removes an ISIS flag in the Syrian town of Tabqa on April 30, 2017 Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP
QAMISHLI, Syria — The Islamic State (ISIS) has 10,000 members left in Iraq and Syria, a coalition spokesperson said in northeast Syria (Rojava) on Tuesday.
“The UN says there are approximately 10,000 members of Daesh (ISIS) left. So they have come from 40,000 in 2014… they are not going to take over any territory, because we’ve defeated them territorially,” spokesperson Col. Wayne Marotto said following a press conference in the Hasaka town of Rmelan.
ISIS was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in December 2017 and in Syria in March 2019, but remains active in areas across Iraq and in and Syria’s Deiz ez-Zor province.
“Now they are doing an insurgency…they are assassinating people, they are kidnapping people. They are a bunch of criminals. They are still out there in some parts of Iraq, in the mountains and in the caves. We find them and we bomb them and we kill them,” he added.
Disputed areas such as Kirkuk, Salahaddin and Diyala are particularly vulnerable to ISIS attacks, including abductions, extortion and IED explosions.
The United States leads the International Coalition forces. It has trained 120,000 troops in Syria and Iraq and protected 8 million people from ISIS attacks in both countries.
Translation by Sarkawt Mohammed
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