World News | UN says threat from Islamic State extremists remains high

United Nations, Feb. 10 (AP) — The threat posed by Islamic State extremists remains high and has increased in and around conflict zones, where the group’s expansion in central, southern and Sahel Africa “is particularly Worrying,” the UN counterterrorism chief said Thursday.

Deputy Secretary-General Vladimir Voronkov told the UN Security Council that the group, also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, continues to use the internet, social media, video games and gaming platforms “to expand its outreach to radicalize and recruit new supporters”

Read also | Pakistan crisis: Government showing bravery as IMF bailout stalls, report says.

“ISIS’ use of emerging technologies remains a key issue,” he said, noting its continued use of drones for surveillance and reconnaissance and “virtual assets” to raise funds.

Voronkov said the heightened threat posed by ISIS and its affiliates, including their continued expansion in parts of Africa, underscores the need for a multifaceted approach — focusing not only on security but also on preventive measures, including conflict prevention.

Read also | China uses artificial intelligence-generated news anchors to promote political content on social media, the report said.

The Islamic State has declared itself the caliphate in large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq it captured in 2014. The extremist group was officially declared defeated in Iraq in 2017 after three years of bloody fighting that left tens of thousands dead and cities reduced to rubble, but its sleeper cells remain in both countries.

Some 65,600 suspected Islamic State members and their family members — including Syrians and foreign nationals — are still being held in camps in northeastern Syria run by Kurdish groups allied with the United States, according to a Human Rights Watch report in December and in prison.

Voronkov said the pace of repatriation was still too slow and “children continue to bear the brunt of this catastrophe.” At the same time, he said, the “foreign terrorist fighters” who joined extremist groups were not “Mobility between different conflict zones”.

“The threat from Daesh is further exacerbated by the relocation of foreign terrorist fighters with battlefield experience to their homeland or to third countries,” said Voronkov, head of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism.

Chan Wai-hsiung, acting chairman of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, told members that the failure to repatriate foreign nationals from camps provided Daesh with “continuous opportunities to recruit recruits from camps and prisons, and facilitate radicalization into violence and the spread of terrorism”

The threat from Daesh “poses a complex, evolving and persistent threat in both conflict and non-conflict areas,” he said.

Chen noted that ISIS continues to exploit “local vulnerabilities and inter-community tensions,” particularly in Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa, as well as the expansion of its affiliates in parts of central, southern and western Africa.

He also cited Daesh’s use of “extortion, robbery, smuggling, taxation, donations and kidnapping for ransom” to generate income and fundraise through a variety of means, as well as using social media and gaming platforms.

The main means by which ISIS moves funds remains unregistered informal cash transfer networks and mobile money services, he said.

Daesh’s acquisition of conventional and improvised weapons, “including components of unmanned aircraft systems and information and communications technology, continues to fuel the terrorist threat,” Chen said, noting that it uses improvised, stolen or illegally trafficked weapons to carry out deadly attacks on targets. target range. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)