UNITED NATIONS, June 20. /TASS/. The terrorist threat situation in northern and northeastern Syria remains tense, as militants are able to freely cross the Syrian-Iraqi border, Igor Sirotkin, the deputy director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and chief of staff of Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee, said at a high-level conference of heads of anti-terrorist organizations at the United Nations on Tuesday.
"Despite the military defeat suffered by international terrorism in its attempts to create a quasi-state formation - a caliphate - in the Middle East, the situation there remains tense, primarily in the north and northeast of Syria," Sirotkin stated. "The high permeability of the Syrian-Iraqi border enables the militants to move freely and replenish material and manpower resources."
He noted that very dangerous were foreign terrorists with combat experience gained in Syria and Iraq, in particular, in other regions that were experiencing an erosion of statehood.
"First of all, this is true of the African continent, especially its western part. The Maghreb and Sahel territories are turning into the epicenter of the Islamist terrorist threat: armed terrorist groups are expanding their zones of influence, creating a real danger of reincarnation of the Islamic State (a terrorist organization banned in Russia - TASS) in the form of an ‘African caliphate’."