The wide-ranging report, put together by the UN monitoring team that tracks the global jihadi terror threat, states that the group is consolidating in Iraq and Syria and "showing confidence in its ability to increasingly operate in a brazen manner in its former core area."

It states that the number of ISIS attacks in Iraq and Syria "increased significantly in early 2020 as compared with the same period in 2019."

Referring to the situation in Iraq, the UN monitoring team stated that ISIS has "exploited security gaps caused by the pandemic and by political turbulence in Iraq to relaunch a sustained rural insurgency, as well as sporadic operations in Baghdad and other large cities."

In recent weeks in particular, Iraq has seen a huge surge in Covid-19 cases, with the number of cumulative cases surpassing 100,000 on Thursday compared with fewer than 7,000 confirmed on June 1.

Syria has far fewer confirmed cases, but leaders of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces say ISIS has exploited the fact that the pandemic has limited the SDF's mobility in the region.

Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the top commander of the SDF, told CTC Sentinel, the monthly publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, in June that a major Covid-19 outbreak would limit his forces' ability to counter the Islamic State "because we will be busy managing the situation in detention facilities" where the group currently houses thousands of former ISIS members.

The newly released UN report, which is based on information from member states, estimates that there are currently more than 10,000 ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria.

One reason for ISIS's resilience in those countries is money. According to the new UN report, member states assess ISIS still has approximately $100 million in reserves. It states the group's assets are "believed to take the form of cash, buried or stored in caches across the conflict zone or kept with financial facilitators in neighbouring countries. Some of the funds have been invested in legitimate businesses in Iraq, the Syrian Arab Republic and neighbouring countries."

Report challenges Trump's narrative

The new United Nations findings challenge the narrative of President Donald Trump, who earlier this year claimed to have destroyed "100% of ISIS and its territorial caliphate."

The UN monitors also presented a more pessimistic assessment than that recently presented by the Trump administration. In June, Ambassador James Jeffrey, the special envoy to the global coalition to defeat ISIS, stated that although ISIS remained "a resilient and significant threat" in Iraq and Syria, there had been a small reduction in the overall number of ISIS attacks and a lessening in their complexity, "so we think the situation is not getting worse, it's getting better."

The UN report does not paint a uniformly negative picture of the evolving ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria. It noted that several significant ISIS leaders had been removed since Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed

BlackFacts Details

GBV and COVID-19 the ‘twin pandemics’ engulfing SA – Mabuza

United States Facts

Sports Facts

Southern United States Facts

Business Facts