They order killing of Muslim clerics who criticise them
They order killing of Muslim clerics who criticise them
The ISIS group’s ranks have been pared back by international and local military action in Iraq and Syria to their lowest level since Washington began monitoring the group, a senior official said on Tuesday.
The comments from deputy-secretary of state Antony Blinken came one day before President Barack Obama was due to convene his national security team at CIA headquarters to take stock of the anti-ISIS fight.
“Working by, with and through local partners, we have taken back 40 per cent of the territory that Daesh (ISIS) controlled a year ago in Iraq and 10 per cent in Syria,” Mr Blinken told US legislators in prepared testimony.
“In fact, we assess Daesh’s numbers are the lowest they’ve been since we began monitoring their manpower in 2014,” he added.
Mr Blinken did not put a new figure on the size of the jihadist group’s fighting force in his statement to the Senate committee overseeing funding for the state department’s programme to counter violent extremism.
Meanwhile, ISIS issued a list of names of Muslim clerics, calling them “imams of kafir” and asking its followers to kill anyone who disagrees with them — including Islamic leaders.
In the latest issue of its propaganda magazine Dabiq, ISIS has singled out those clerics who criticise them and said the “leaders of infidels” should be slaughtered.
Muslim clerics across the world, including India, have condemned attacks by ISIS, saying that being a Muslim was about peace, not violence.
