Syria: Prison Attack is Latest Sign of ISIS Resurgence

THE NEW YORK TIMES: ISIS has mounted a series of sophisticated attacks recently in both Syria and Iraq, suggesting the group is re-emerging as a serious threat three years after it was driven out.

Mourners gathered in shrine in the city of Najaf last week to pay respects to an Iraqi soldier killed in an Islamic State attack. | Ali Najafi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
BAGHDAD — An audacious attack on a Syrian prison that houses thousands of Islamic State detainees. A series of strikes against military forces in neighboring Iraq. The dissemination of a video showing the beheading of a kidnapped Iraqi police officer.

The evidence of a resurgence of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is mounting by the day, three years after the militants lost their last territorial foothold in the so-called caliphate, which once stretched across vast parts of the two countries. The fact that ISIS was able to mount multiple, coordinated and sophisticated attacks is evidence that what had been believed to be disparate sleeper cells are re-emerging as a more serious threat.

“It’s a wake-up call for regional players, for national players that ISIS is not over, that the fight is not over,” said Kawa Hassan, Middle East and North Africa director at the Stimson Center, a Washington research institute. “It shows the resilience of ISIS to strike back at the time and place of their choosing.” » | Jane Arraf | Tuesday, January 25, 2022