The F-22 Raptor prowls the skies of Syria.
On Friday October 3, 2014 Rear Admiral John Kirby at the Pentagon gave a press briefing on the fight against ISIL terrorists. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (aka: The Islamic State).
There are a huge number of foreign fighters in ISIS’s ranks. In June 2014, The Economist reported that “ISIS may have up to 6,000 fighters in Iraq and 3,000–5,000 in Syria, including perhaps 3,000 foreigners; nearly a thousand are reported to hail from Chechnya and perhaps 500 or so more from France, Britain and elsewhere in Europe”.
Source: http://www.economist.com/…/21604230-extreme-islamist-group-…
Chechen leader Abu Omar al-Shishani, for example, was made commander of the northern sector of ISIS in Syria in 2013.
According to The New York Times, in September 2014 there were more than 2,000 Europeans and 100 Americans among ISIS’s foreign fighters. These numbers cannot be verified. I suspect the number of America’s are much higher than being reported.
Here is what Rear Admiral Kirby had to say:
“An update on Iraq and Syria. There have been, today, more than 334 coalition airstrikes in total, including 248 in Iraq and 86 airstrikes in Syria. And today, the Department of Defense is launching a new webpage on defense.gov, focused on our targeted operations against ISIL terrorists. You can see a screenshot of it there.
The site contains an interactive map which will detail continued airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, including mission objective, number of airstrikes, and aircraft utilized. The direct link to the page is www.defense.gov/counter-isil.
See raw video: United States Airstrikes on Isis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trzx53-Kluw