In a piece published on Sunday, the Khorasan daily said the project to activate Daesh sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq had gathered pace in the wake of a recent attack on a prison in Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah and a jail break of dangerous Daesh elements from the facility.
In Iraq, there has been a sharp hike in terrorist operations of Daesh, in the latest of which 11 members of the Iraqi military lost their lives, the paper said.
“Although it was initially believed that Daesh would establish a foothold in Afghanistan in the months to come, the Taliban’s management of Afghanistan has blocked the growth of Daesh and members of the terror group are instead recruiting and regrouping in Syria and Iraq,” the daily said.
“On the other side, Daesh activities are notable in [Iraq’s] Diyala Province near Iran’s western borderline, something that can be described as a threat to Iran,” it warned.
The newspaper linked the rise in Daesh activities to the central Iraqi government’s lack of control over the country’s peripheries and the Damascus government’s “abandoning” of Syria’s northern areas, which are occupied by US-backed Kurdish militants.
The two factors, it added, are currently posing serious challenges to the resistance axis “which are unlikely to be overcome easily.”
