Study finds increase in foreign fighters for Syria, Iraq

The House Homeland Security Committee says the USA is failing to stop most people trying to go overseas to join terrorist groups, including the Islamic State.

More than 25,000 foreigners have flocked to war-torn Syria and Iraq since 2011 to fight with Islamist terrorist groups including ISIS, according to US government estimates noted in the report.

The report referred to as urgently for a nationwide technique for combating the menace from such fighters, with higher info sharing inside the United states and internationally.

“The fact is, we’re losing in this fight against ISIS. Almost 70 ISIS followers have been arrested in the past year in the United States of America”, Republican Representative Michael McCaul, the committee’s chairman, told a news conference, using an alternative name for Islamic State.

In other cases, authorities are monitoring people who have returned from the region, said McCaul, R-Texas, but getting too little assistance in spotting warning signs.

While most of the recruits are from Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, a significant number of Western youth have also joined the terror cult, after turning victim to their online propaganda. McCaul famous, for instance, that there are 200,000 Islamic State tweets on Twitter day-after-day.

Targets near Hawija bore the brunt of the barrage in Iraq, with eight strikes hitting a tactical unit and destroying a staging area, 45 Islamic State fighting positions and buildings and vehicles, the Combined Joint Task Force said in the statement released on Wednesday.

According to the final report, of the hundreds of Americans who have sought to travel to Syria and Iraq, authorities have only interdicted a fraction of them.

The House report made 32 recommendations and lawmakers said they would work on crafting legislation based on them.

The study also criticized foreign governments, particularly in Europe, for failing to take measures such as screening travellers against terrorism watch lists or trying to identify forged passports.