News Digest

Americans, other foreigners joining terrorist groups in Syria

The number of foreign fighters traveling to join the Islamic State or rival militant groups in Syria is continuing to grow, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official will tell a congressional hearing on Wednesday. More than 20,000 foreign fighters from more than 90 countries have gone to Syria, Nick Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in testimony prepared for a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security. Rasmussen said the influx far exceeds the rate of foreigners who went to wage jihad in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any other point in the past 20 years.

The battlefields in Iraq and Syria provide foreign fighters with combat experience, weapons and explosives training, and access to terrorist networks that may be planning attacks which target the West.

Nick Rasmussen, National Counterterrorism Center director

U.S. officials fear that some of the foreign fighters will return undetected to their homes to mount terrorist attacks. At least one of the men responsible for the attack on a satirical magazine in Paris had spent time with Islamic extremists in Yemen. It’s also difficult to track Americans and Europeans who have made it to Syria, where the Islamic State group is the dominant force trying to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad.