US OFFICIAL:Over 10,000 ISIS fighters killed in nine months but they have all been replaced.

A US official from the Pentagon has said over 10,000 ISIS fighters have been killed but unfortunately almost all of them have been replaced showing the terror group's recruiting power.

Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken's  comments to France's Inter radio came a day after he and officials from other coalition partners met in Paris with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to discuss their strategy to fight the Islamic State group.

Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said after a conference in Paris  that more than 10,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed by American-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in nine months

The U.S. began leading a campaign of airstrikes against Islamic State targets last August in support of Iraqi ground troops, and a month later expanded to bombing sites in neighboring Syria. 

In September 2014, the CIA estimated  that there are between 20,000 and 32,000 total ISIS fighters holds, U.S. intelligence officials say. That's because, according to the officials, ISIS is able to "adequately replace" slain fighters through a combination of conscription and recruitment both inside and outside of Syria and Iraq.

U.S. authorities have been wary of stating publicly how many ISIS militants are thought to have been killed since the campaign began.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones told Al Arabiya television in January that an estimated 6,000 fighters had been killed.

The exact number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria is not known, as the group doesn’t advertise it. But what is clear is that it is able to recruit and/or conscript from the local populations that it controls, and it is integrating large numbers of foreign fighters from all over the world. At the moment, given its recent successes, the Islamic State appears to be able to replace its battlefield losses.

Thursday, June 04, 2015