A U.S.-led multinational coalition has launched tens of thousands of strikes in Iraq and Syria over the past seven years, weakening the radical group's hold on the region.
The Islamic State group vowed in an audio message released Monday that the extremists will start a new phase of attacks that will focus on Israel and blasted the U.S. administration’s plan to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Turkey’s combative president is threatening to launch a military operation in northeastern Syria that is designed to push back U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish forces — an invasion that carries major risks for a highly combustible region in war-devastated Syria.
The Islamic State remains a global threat despite losing the once vast territory it held in Syria and Iraq, U.S. officials said Thursday in warning about persistent violence from underground cells and an expansion of militants into new areas.
U.S.-backed forces rooted out ISIS forces from their last piece of territory, and on March 23 declared they had defeated the militant group after a devastating, nearly five-year war.