UN warns ISIS leader plotting comeback from Iraq

The ISIS terror group’s self-declared caliphate may be dead, but its leaders are hanging on in Syria and Iraq, dreaming of the day when they can again direct attacks on targets around the world.

The ISIS terror group’s self-declared caliphate may be dead, but its leaders are hanging on in Syria and Iraq, dreaming of the day when they can again direct attacks on targets around the world.

The conclusion is part of a sobering assessment in a newly released quarterly United Nations report on ISIS which warned that the epicenter for the terror group’s budding renaissance is Iraq, “where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and most of the ISIS leadership are now based.”

“The leadership aims to adapt, survive and consolidate in the core area and to establish sleeper cells at the local level in preparation for eventual resurgence,” the report cautioned.

In the meantime, the report warned the terror organization, “has continued its evolution into a mainly covert network” since the fall of Baghouz, the last territory it held in Syria, this past March.

While the assessment that Baghdadi is operating mostly out of Iraq is new, the other warnings are similar to concerns voiced by US officials and others dating back to last year.

ISIS “is well-positioned to rebuild and work on enabling its physical caliphate to re-emerge,” Pentagon spokesman Commander Sean Robertson told VOA last August.

More recently, a report by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said the terror group is poised for a comeback that “could be faster and even more devastating” than when it first swept across parts of Syria and Iraq.