UN: 20,000 Foreign Fighters from 100 Countries Stormed to Syria and Iraq

Published: Apr 3, 2015Fighters from 100 nations – more than half the countries in the world – have joined militant groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, according to United Nations.

Photo from: Al-Alam

Worryingly, the report warned if ISIS was defeated in the war-torn region then the barbarous foreign fighters could be scattered across the world, DailyMail reports.
The number of foreign fighters worldwide soared by a staggering 71 per cent between the middle of 2014 and March 2015 after ISIS gained significant territory, Al-Alam reported.
Syria and Iraq were by far the biggest destinations, with over 20,000 foreign fighters travelling to the region to fight for mainly ISIS but also the Al-Nusra Front.
The panel said the thousands of foreign fighters who travelled to both countries are living and working in ‘a veritable “international finishing school” for extremists’ as was the case in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
Afghan security forces estimated in March – three months after British troops withdrew – that about 6,500 foreign fighters were active in the country.
And it said hundreds of foreigners are fighting in Yemen, Libya and Pakistan, around 100 in Somalia, and others in the Sahel countries in northern Africa, and in the Philippines.
The panel of experts monitoring UN sanctions against Al-Qaeda said in the report that the scale of the problem has increased over the past three years and the flow of foreign fighters is higher than it has ever been historically