(The Sun) – Ten thousand ISIS fighters are poised to strike in northern Iraq after using the pandemic to rebuild their forces. The chilling warning has come from both the commander of Kurdish forces preparing to resist the maniacs’ onslaught and the United Nations.

It comes as the RAF has also been called into action to strike at targets in Iraq. ISIS once controlled a vast swath of territory across Iraq and Syria, seized in a terrifying offensive in 2014, culminating in its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamic Caliphate in a Mosul mosque.

The bloodthirsty jihadis ruled with extreme brutality before a coalition of Kurdish forces backed by Western air power pushed them into their final pocket of territory in Baghouz, Syria in 2018. But since their apparent defeat, they have been slowly rebuilding,


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despite the death of Baghdadi at the hands of US special forces. Now Sirwan Barzani, a commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces stationed near the northern city of Erbil, told The Times the terrorists had taken advantage of a lull in operations against them. They have emerged from hiding among civilians and reformed under a core leadership operating in the mountain regions of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, he said. READ MORE