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| An image grab taken from a propaganda video by ISIS militants in Iraq. |
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A high Russian official said Tuesday that some 80,000 militants are fighting for the Islamic State, out of which 30,000 are in Iraq and 50,000 in Syria with some 7,000 nationals of former Soviet states fighting for ISIS, the Russian state-controlled TASS news agency reported.
"According to reports, militants now control around 40 percent of Iraqi territory and 50 percent of Syrian territory," TASS quoted Yevgeny Sysoyev, the deputy head of the Russian Federal Security (FSB), the successor agency to the KGB, as saying at a security conference in the Russian city of Sochi Tuesday.
"Among members of the group are citizens of 80 countries, including France, Great Britain, Germany, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the US, Canada, as well as Russia and other [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries," he added. "Among them are about 30,000 foreign terrorists. Most of them come from the Middle East and North Africa."
