Acting Director of the National Counterterrorism Center: ISIS Has ‘A Lot Of Options’ To Attack Western Interests

US News and World Review: ISIS Remains Potent, Deadly Despite Baghdadi’s Death, Top Spy Says

The acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center says the Islamic State group has ‘a lot of options’ to attack Western interests.

Killing the Islamic State group's founder and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will have little effect on preventing the terrorist network from conducting future attacks, the top U.S. official for counterterror operations said Wednesday.

"There's no question that the losses over the weekend were significant to ISIS," Russell Travers, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a congressional panel, using an alternative name for the Islamic State group. "At the same time, it's a deep bench."

Despite a consistent U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria that effectively dismantled its so-called caliphate, the number of fighters in those countries aligned with the group has grown in the last five years from a low point of roughly 1,000 fighters, Travers told the House Homeland Security Committee. As many as 14,000 extremists remain there now, with roughly 2,000 in Syria from foreign countries.

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WNU Editor:  When it comes to radical Islam, I have learned one thing over the years. Never underestimate them. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may be dead, but the ideology that he was a part of is still alive and very active.



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