UN experts: Islamic State aims for resurgence in Iraq, Syria

Leaders of the Islamic State extremist group are aiming to consolidate and create conditions for an "eventual resurgence in its Iraqi and Syrian heartlands," U.N. experts said in a new report. The panel of experts said in a report to the Security Council this week that the process is more advanced in Iraq, where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and most of the militant group's leadership are now based following the fall of the so-called "caliphate" that he declared in the two neighboring countries. In Syria, where the last IS stronghold was toppled in March, the IS covert network is spreading and sleeper cells are being established at the provincial level, mirroring what has been happening in Iraq since 2017, the report said.

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