Iran has nearly tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium over the last three months in violation of its deal with world powers and is refusing to answer questions about three possible undeclared nuclear sites, the UN atomic watchdog said according to toi.com.

The International Atomic Energy Agency made the statement in a confidential report distributed to member countries that was seen by the Associated Press.

The agency said of February 19, Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile amounted to 1,020.9kg, compared with 372.3kg noted in its last report on November 3.

The nuclear deal Tehran signed in 2015 with the US, Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia allows Iran only to keep a stockpile of 202.8kg.

The deal promised Tehran economic incentives in return for the curbs on its nuclear programme, but since Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal unilaterally in 2018 Iran has been slowly violating the deal’s restrictions.

With the violations, Tehran has said it hopes to put pressure on the other nations involved to increase economic incentives to make up for hard-hitting sanctions imposed by Washington after the American withdrawal.

In a second report issued on Tuesday, the IAEA said it had identified three locations in Iran where the country possibly stored undeclared nuclear material or undertook nuclear-related activities without declaring it to international observers. It said it had sent questions to Iran in three letters but received no answers.

“The agency identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations in Iran that had not been declared by Iran,” the agency said in the report.

The IAEA had previously said that man-made uranium particles had been discovered at one location outside Tehran that had not been declared, which appeared to confirm allegations made by the US and Israel about a secret nuclear warehouse.

The agency said Tehran responded to its latest concerns in a letter on January 28 that “Iran will not recognise any allegation on past activities and does not consider itself obliged to respond to such allegations”.

The IAEA responded that its requests for clarification were in line with Iran’s broader commitment to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities and not tied to the landmark nuclear deal with world powers.

Turkey said that two more of its soldiers were killed Wednesday in a Syrian government attack in northwestern Syria, as steady clashes between the two national armies continued to rack up casualties, ike reported by dailymail.co.uk.

Turkey has sent thousands of troops into the area to support Syrian insurgents holed up there, but hasn’t been able to stop the Russian-backed Syrian government offensive to retake the Idlib province.

Near the Turkish border, the Idlib area is the last rebel stronghold after nine years of war in Syria.

The Turkish Defense Ministry’s statement said that the latest Syrian attack on its troops also wounded six soldiers. It did not provide further details.

The assault came as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to depart for Moscow where he says he aims to broker a cease-fire in Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces in northwestern Syria have killed more than 50 Turkish troops in the past month, including 33 soldiers killed Thursday in a single airstrike.

Moscow has laid the blame for the escalation on Ankara, ahead of the summit between the two main power brokers in Syria.

Russian officials have said they hold Turkey responsible for the collapse of a cease-fire agreement reached in Sochi, Russia in 2018. They say Ankara has failed to honor the deal and rein in militants who continued attacking Syrian and Russian targets.

Turkish forces on Tuesday shot down a Syrian warplane over the northwest Idlib province, the Turkish defense ministry said, the third such downing in three days, according to thedefensepost.com.

Over the weekend Turkey launched the “Operation Spring Shield” military offensive against Russian-backed Syrian forces in the northwest.

“As part of the Spring Shield operation that is successfully continuing, an L-39 plane belonging to the regime has been downed,” the Turkish defense ministry said on March 3.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the plane was “targeted.” It was not immediately clear if the crew survived.

The Syrian air force is known to operate Aero L-39 attack aircraft and has deployed the plane against rebels throughout the civil war.

It’s the third such reported downing since Spring Shield began. Turkey said it shot down two other jets on Sunday and destroyed a Turkish drone along with air defenses. Ankara has also claimed to have killed more than 2,000 Syrian forces, numbers that have not been verified.

Turkish forces launched reprisals against regime targets in Idlib on Friday after dozens of Turkish soldiers were said to have been killed in Idlib province in a strike Ankara blamed on the regime rather than its main military backer Russia.

The newest phase in the Syrian conflict has pitted NATO member Turkey against its rival Russia and threatens to drag Turkey’s allies into the war in the northwest.

U.S. Special Envoy for Syria James Jeffrey and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft visited Turkey’s Hatay province on Tuesday. Jeffrey is at odds with the Pentagon over Turkey’s request for Patriot missile defense systems along its southern border to defend against the regime, Politico reported on Friday.

Craft said her priority was making sure that border crossings remained open to allow aid into Syria.

The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell will meet Turkish officials to discuss Idlib and the pending refugee crisis on the Turkey-Greek border.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the weekend that Turkey would no longer hold back millions of Syrian and other refugees who wish to reach Europe, in violation of a 2016 deal with the E.U.

Nearly three million Syrian refugees are already in Turkey, and Ankara is desperate to keep people languishing in Idlib province from coming over the Syrian border.

Russia and the Syrian government consider all of the rebels fighting Assad’s forces to be terrorists. Idlib, the last rebel pocket in the country following nine years of civil war, is largely controlled by the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but is home to millions of people displaced from other parts of the country. Nearly a million people have fled towards Turkey after the regime launched its current offensive in December.

Turkey has raised the death toll from a Syrian government airstrike on its forces in northwestern Syria the previous night to 33 Turkish troops, the highest number of Turkish soldiers killed in a single day since Ankara first intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2016.

The deaths, which came in an attack late Thursday, mark a serious escalation in the direct conflict between Turkish and Russia-backed Syrian forces that has been waged since early February. The earlier reported death toll was 29 troops.

Ambassadors from NATO countries are holding emergency talks this Friday at the request of Turkey, who is a member of the alliance.

Turkey is a main backer of the Syrian opposition while Russia has been giving military support to the Syrian government offensive in Idlib that has displaced about 950,000 people and left hundreds of civilians dead.

Russian frigates redeployed to Syria

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry claims the Turkish troops that came under fire in Idlib were deployed among “terrorist battle formations.” The Turkish troops were in the area of Behun, and according to coordinates given to Russia’s Reconciliation Center in Syria, “there were no Turkish military units in the area … and there weren’t supposed to be” there.

Meanwhile, two Russian frigates carrying cruise missiles have reportedly been deployed to Syria. Admiral Makarov and Admiral Grigorovich of the Black Sea Fleet are currently en route to the Syrian coast with Kalibr cruise missiles on board. Both warships previously took part in Russia’s offensive in Syria.

Syria’s state news agency, SANA, carried a report saying Turkey has acknowledged its forces were killed “in operations of the Syrian Arab Army against a terrorist organization.”

It added that Syrian troops at the time were repelling attacks by “terrorist groups backed by Turkey.”

U.N. secretary-general has reiterated his call for an immediate cease-fire and expressed serious concern about the risk to civilians from escalating military actions,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“Without urgent action, the risk of even greater escalation grows by the hour,” he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a six-hour emergency security meeting in Ankara late on Thursday. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevult Cavusoglu spoke to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg by telephone.

The airstrike comes after a Russian delegation spent two days in Ankara for talks with Turkish officials on the situation in Idlib, where a Syrian government offensive has sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing towards the Turkish border.

The offensive has also engulfed many of the 12 military observation posts Turkey has in Idlib.

Turkey hosts some 3.6 million Syrians and under a 2016 deal with the European Union agreed to step up efforts to halt the flow of refugees to Europe.

Since then Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to “open the gates” in several disputes with European states.

In an interview with French media this month, Kurdistan Region of Iraq Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said there is a “great possibility” that ISIS will stage a comeback in Iraq, especially in territories under dispute between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government in Baghdad, like reported by jpost.com.

Near the town of Makhmour, in one of the disputed areas, local Kurdish peshmerga soldiers think the prime minister is correct.

“Daesh is past the stage of making preparations,” Col. Srud Barzanji told The Media Line, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “Now, they are ready.”
Amid sectarian tensions, the US-Iran conflict and political upheaval, ISIS activity appears to be increasing in Iraq’s disputed territories.
‘They exist and do operations’

ISIS swept through northern Iraq in 2014, taking the large city of Mosul, oil-rich Kirkuk, Makhmour and other areas. The Sunni Islamist extremists lost their last territory in 2017, following a joint Iraqi, Kurdish and US-led international coalition effort against them.

Since then, ISIS has continued to carry out bombings, kidnappings and other small-scale attacks. The group is particularly active in disputed territories like Makhmour. Kurdish forces took these ethnically and religiously diverse areas from ISIS in 2014. The Kurdistan Region voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum held in September 2017, following which Iraqi federal forces retook these territories.

That led to some areas becoming relatively ungoverned, creating a security vacuum that allowed ISIS to thrive.
There have been several incidents in the disputed territories so far in February. ISIS gunmen killed four Kurds in a Kirkuk province village. ISIS also released two kidnapped men in Garmiyan, near the border with Iran, whom it had kidnapped last year. In Makhmour, ISIS gunmen opened fire on a camp housing Kurdish refugees from Turkey, killing a guard.

“It means they exist and do operations,” Col. Barzanji said of the camp attack.
US forces temporarily paused operations against ISIS in Iraq following the American drone strike that killed the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad on January 3, according to a US Defense Department report on ISIS. His death was preceded and followed by attacks by Iran-backed fighters on US forces and assets, including the embassy in Baghdad.
Two days after Soleimani’s death, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US troops from the country. Notably, Kurdish and Sunni parliamentarians did not participate in the vote, a first reading on the legislation.

However, the Iraqi military announced that joint operations resumed in February, following an anti-ISIS raid in the western Anbar province.
‘Many bombs happen you don’t see in media’
Just outside Makhmour, Barzanji leads peshmerga soldiers at the Black Tiger camp – named after their division. They have a base atop a mountain in the Qara Chokh range, where ISIS gunmen hide in caves between Kurdish and Iraqi positions. The area around the base is rural, with green fields lush from the rainy northern Iraq winter.

The peshmerga fighters keep ISIS hardware they captured in battle at the base, including mortars and armored trucks ISIS used in suicide attacks.
Barzanji said ISIS’s movements show the Islamists are ready to carry out a major attack again.
“Sometimes we find bags of women’s clothing,” he said. “This means their women are coming back to them.
“Many foreign fighters came from Syria to Iraq,” he added.

Kurdish and Iraqi media cover ISIS activity, but many things go unreported, according to Barzanji.
“Many bombings happen that you don’t see in the media,” he said, referring to an improvised explosive device attack in the village of Aliava earlier this month.
“Sometimes Iraq [federal forces] defuses bombs,” said Barzanji. “They want to show that the situation is quiet, but it’s not true.”
An Iraqi army spokesman in Nineveh province, where Makhmour is located, was not available for comment.

In addition to Iraqi, Kurdish and coalition forces, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters from Turkey operate in the Makhmour area and control the refugee camp that ISIS attacked. Turkey regularly bombs PKK targets in KRG territory.
‘ISIS lacks the capacity to do too much harm’

Some analysts believe that the Kurdish prime minister has been exaggerating the ISIS threat for political reasons in recent interviews with Western media. In terms of security, the KRG benefits from the US troop presence in Kurdistan. The American consulate in Erbil, the KRG capital, is the US government’s only fully functioning consular presence in the country following the December attacks on the embassy in Baghdad. This helps the KRG, which controls its borders and government independent of Baghdad, to show it is safer than the rest of Iraq.

Other analysts have countered that the ISIS threat was ignored in 2014, allowing the Islamists to wreak havoc.
David Witty, a former US army colonel who advised the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service, said ISIS was not carrying out major attacks yet.
“KRG has been saying this for a while,” he told The Media Line. “ISIS attacks have increased, but nothing too significant so far.”
Baghdad and southern Iraq are currently gripped by anti-government protests decrying corruption, Iranian support for Baghdad and poor public services. ISIS sees this as an opportunity; hence the increase in attacks, according to Witty.

“I think ISIS is trying to take advantage of political and social turmoil in Iraq, but lacks the capacity to do too much harm,” he said.
‘Daesh trying to exploit lack of trust’

ISIS takes advantage of ethno-religious tensions in Iraq that have not gone away with the Islamists’ defeat. In the Mosul area, for example, people from many Muslim and Christian communities fear the Iran-backed armed groups known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi.
The Hashd, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), are mostly Shia Muslim groups formed in 2014 by religious edict to fight ISIS. Many receive material and political support from Iran, and they have Sunni, Yezidi and Christian units as well. The Hashd proved effective in fighting ISIS, and now have representation in parliament and largely control Mosul – a predominantly Sunni Muslim city that was the largest under ISIS control.
How things go in Mosul and other liberated areas will determine whether ISIS can rise again, Witty said.

“The danger is the Iraqi government’s lack of action in liberated areas that might cause more alienation,” he said. “Rebuilding, continued PMF presence, lack of security, central government distracted” are all relevant factors, he added.
One Iraqi analyst in Baghdad said that ISIS knows Iraq’s disputed territories and the Mosul area better than the government, allowing it to exploit tensions.
“Daesh knows demographics very well, perhaps better than officials,” Diyari Salih, a frequent contributor to Iraqi media outlets, told The Media Line.

There are several communal controversies in the Mosul area, and the north of Nineveh province where it is located has many towns under dispute between Erbil and Baghdad. One issue is local opposition to and fear of the Hashd. Another is concern that demographic change in favor of the Shia is taking place.
ISIS can exploit opposition to the Hashd and sectarian tensions in Mosul and the disputed territories, Salih said.

“There is a troubled relationship among the residents of these areas with military authorities and the Hashd,” he said. “Daesh is trying to exploit the lack of trust between communities and the lack of trust in the political system.”
Salih calls the disputed territories an “Iraq in miniature.” The area is home to people from all of Iraq’s ethnic and religious communities and is in the middle of the country; there will be no peace in Iraq until the area’s conflicts are resolved, he said.

“Security in Iraq and even its territorial integrity depend on the level of stability there,” said Salih.
Only when residents of the disputed territories live harmoniously will ISIS be unable to thrive there, he said.
“A culture of tolerance, a culture of peaceful coexistence, social justice and a strengthening of the state’s position in the disputed territories,” said Salih. “This is an essential entry point for ending any future Daesh threat to the area.”

Thirty nine ISIS militants were killed in landing operations carried out by Counter Terrorism Service in Saladin Governorate, northern Iraq, like reported by gulf-times.com.

The Iraqi Security Media Cell said in a statement that the anti-terrorist forces clashed for more than 10 hours with an armed group of ISIS elements in Khanukah mountains, confirming that the operation had resulted in the death of 39 militants, including leaders of the organisation, especially the so-called the ‘legal mufti ‘and the ‘military official’ of ISIS.

Iraqi forces carried out several landing operations to eliminate these elements, noting that two tunnels were found in the area, the first being a weapons depot that includes large quantities and numbers of weapons and ammunition, while the second is used as a ‘money bureau’ with equipment, documents and computers related to financial transactions of ISIS members and the entities that they deal with, according to the statement.

The statement confirmed that the two tunnels were destroyed with all their contents after the air support by the international coalition aircraft bombed the place, pointing out that four Iraqi forces were wounded in the operation.

In December 2017, Iraqi authorities announced the liberation of the entire territory of the country from ISIS grip after about three and a half years of confrontations with the organisation that occupied about a third of the country, but intermittent confrontations between the two sides are still continuing, especially in the northern regions.

The death last month of the leader of al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch in a U.S. drone strike has dealt a blow to the group’s ambitions, but Western officials and analysts warn that a recent escalation in Yemen’s conflict could allow it to regroup to some extent, like reported by washingtonpost.com.

“An ideological hardcore of AQAP will always remain,” said Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, using the acronym for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen affiliate is called. “AQAP has made strong comebacks before, reuniting its scattered fragments into an ideological whole again. This is no time for complacency.”

In a 16-minute audio message over the weekend, AQAP confirmed of the death of its leader Qasim al-Rimi. The group also announced its new leader, Khalid Batarfi, a poetry-reciting veteran al-Qaeda operative often shown in videos offering religious guidance on good parenting and other subjects.

Over the past decade, al-Qaeda has bounced back a few times, regaining territory and recruits by taking advantage of security vacuums arising from the conflicts among Yemen’s myriad warring factions. Now, after a relative lull in the war, fighting is intensifying in at least four provinces, including in or near areas where both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have a presence or support from local tribes.

Yemen’s 5-year-old war pits northern Shiite Muslim rebels known as Houthis against a coalition of U.S.-backed Sunni Muslim nations, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are seeking to restore the country’s internationally recognized government. The coalition is also trying to prevent Iran, which is aligned with the Houthis, from extending its regional influence.

Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have recently engaged in their most significant efforts yet to end the war, including prisoner exchanges and a Saudi decision to permit medical evacuation flights from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. For more than three months, Saudi Arabia had reduced its airstrikes, and the Houthis had halted missile and drone assaults on the kingdom.

But the clashes that resumed last month have prompted top United Nations officials to warn that peace efforts could implode, especially those centering on the strategic port city of Hodeida. The officials say this would worsen a humanitarian crisis already described as the most severe in the world.

In Yemen today, much of the heavy fighting has taken place in the provinces of Sanaa, Al-Jawf, Marib and Saada, according to U.N. officials. AQAP is active in Al-Jawf and Marib, and has tribal loyalists and sympathizers in all four provinces, according to Yemeni tribal leaders, U.N. officials and analysts. Al-Rimi was killed in the Wadi Abedah area of Marib province.

In Bayda province, which neighbors Marib, AQAP and the Islamic State are in a deadly contest for territory, recruits and influence. Clashes and ambushes occur frequently, while the groups are waging a propaganda war on social media forums and Internet chat rooms.

AQAP, for years, was considered by U.S. officials as al-Qaeda’s most dangerous branch. It was behind some of the most audacious assaults against the West. It tried unsuccessfully to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, and it claimed responsibility for the deadly 2015 shootings at the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris.

AQAP seized large swaths of southern Yemen in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring revolts that toppled longtime autocrat Ali Abdullah Saleh. Taking advantage of the civil war that broke out in late 2014, that eventually drew in the Saudi-led coalition in 2015, AQAP gained territory and recruits and deepened its influence and networks among local tribes.

The Islamic State’s branch also emerged out of the political chaos. Today, the group numbers around a few hundred fighters and has waged a guerrilla insurgency in the south, dispatching suicide bombers against Yemeni government soldiers and officials.

U.S. airstrikes, which began under the Obama administration and has continued under President Trump, targeted AQAP leaders and Islamic State militants. In 2015, a U.S. drone strike killed then-AQAP leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, who was al-Rimi’s predecessor. In October 2019, Trump declared that the group’s main bombmaker was killed in a drone strike.

“When we heard the news that Qasim al-Rimi was killed we felt relieved,” said Hamad Wuhait, a tribal leader in Marib. “AQAP is a threat to our community in Yemen and we Yemenis have been combating terrorism and AQAP.”

Still, by the time al-Rimi was killed, AQAP had already been weakened by a loss of leaders and skilled militants, as well as by clashes with the Islamic State and the Houthis, according to analysts. The group’s capability of carrying out attacks against the West had diminished.

“AQAP has really focused most of its efforts on sustaining a toehold inside Yemen, attacking the Houthis and UAE-backed forces while running pared-down media operations focused on the outside world encouraging lone-wolf attacks,” said Peter Salisbury, senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group. “It hasn’t posed the kind of threat to the West it did a decade ago in a number of years.”

Within the group, al-Rimi was a divisive figure who didn’t command the same kind of respect and prestige as his predecessor, analysts said.

“The impact is limited, simply because AQAP was already fragmenting,” said Kendall, referring to al-Rimi’s death. “The evidence suggests that AQAP’s breakaway fragments are increasingly transitioning from holy warriors into guns-for-hire.”

In Bayda, a flurry of AQAP militants have defected to the Islamic State, while others have joined militias and criminal gangs or joined government-backed forces, analysts said.
“ISIS now looks to have the advantage over AQAP in al-Bayda,” Kendall said, referring to the Islamic State by its acronym.

The question now, according to analysts, is whether AQAP’s new leader, Batarfi, can resurrect the group’s fortunes. He once escaped from a Yemeni prison — like both his predecessors — and is a former head of AQAP’s external operations, suggesting the group could refocus again on targeting the West, analysts said.

In appointing a religious figure, the group could also be turning to a more ideological focus, perhaps to gain recruits and credibility. Yet that could alienate AQAP fighters who wanted a military commander or more pragmatic leader in charge.

“It will be interesting to see if this leads to further fragmentation within the group,” tweeted Gregory Johnsen, a former U.N. investigator and author of “The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia.”

There are troubling signs that the conflict could intensify, lessening pressure on AQAP as they seek to regroup under Batarfi.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted missiles fired by the Houthis targeting several Saudi cities, two days after the Pentagon accused Iran of funneling a new type of antiaircraft missile to the Houthis. The rebels have also been deploying increasingly lethal drones, with more powerful engines and explosive payloads, according to a report released last week from Conflict Armament Research, a Britain-based group that tracks weapons in conflict areas.

A Turkish army checkpoint was attacked near the village of Kansafra in the southern province of Idlib. Syrian news agency SANA reported, citing The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), that the strike was carried out by the Russian and Syrian air forces.

According to the SOHR, ten people were killed and wounded in the attack and severalTurkish vehicles were destroyed. Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports, citing their source, about 13 dead servicemen.

According to Syrian media, the airstrike was a response to an offensive by Turkish troops and allied militias on the town of al-Nairab, in the eastern part of the province. In total, SANA points out, 120 attacks of the Russian Air Force were carried out in Idlib province during the day.

The US-led anti-Islamic State Coalition airdropped military equipment in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zor Province in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the media center of the Kurdish-led forces said.

“This support comes within the framework of the joint work and coordination between the two sides in order to eliminate the terrorist cells and organizations and the efforts of both sides to maintain security and stability in Northeastern Syria,” read an SDF press release.

“The Coalition conducts airdrops as a quick method of delivering supplies to remote locations,” said Col. Myles Caggins, Spokesman for the US-led Coalition, formally known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Resolve (CJTF-OIR), to Kurdistan 24.

He added, “This demonstrates the flexibility and advanced capabilities that we bring to the fight against ISIS.”

The US-led global coalition also delivered heavy artillery to military bases in Deir al-Zor, airlifted by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. The artillery has been at these compounds previously when it was used in the fight against the so-called Islamic State.

“US-led International Coalition sent today, Sunday, reinforcements to its military bases in [Deir al-Zor] in the framework of fighting ISIS and continuing partnership with SDF,” the SDF media center explained. “It is worth mentioning that these reinforcements are the continuation of the support delivered by airdrops some days ago.”

Despite the group’s territorial collapse in March 2019 to the Kurdish-led SDF and coalition forces, the anti-Islamic State alliance continues military efforts to locate and root out sleeper cells of the extremist group.

However, after a Turkish military incursion in early October into areas in northern Syria under SDF control, the SDF forces “temporarily paused” operations against the Islamic State to enable its fighters to confront Ankara’s cross-border campaign.

Turkey’s operation came after US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria. The White House then agreed in late October to leave between 500 to 600 American forces in Syria to protect oilfields in the Hasakah and Deir al-Zor provinces.

As the rate of Turkish attacks decreased and amid a ceasefire deal with both Russian and US backing, the SDF has continued counter-Islamic State operations with Coalition forces.

Despite this, Islamic State sleeper cell activity has continued, with the majority of these attacks taking place in Deir al-Zor.

According to a recent report of the Syria-based Rojava Information Centre (RIC) in January 2020, Deir al-Zor had been the site of 40 attacks, while one took place in Manbij, four in Raqqa, and five in Hasakah.

Farhan al-Askar (Abu Wael), a Raqqa Military Council commander, told Kurdistan 24 that there are “sleeper cells and also agents of ISIS who are constantly causing troubles for the civilians in [Deir al-Zor].”

“There are more issues in [Deir al-Zor] because of the resources that the region has, the oil for instance, all the attempts [by Islamic State fighters] is so that they can enable themselves to recontrol those resources.”

Members of Kirkuk Mobilization Forces were injured during an ISIS attack in al- Rashad area, like reported by shafaaq.com.

The Security Media Cell said in a statement that the fourth regiment in Kirkuk Mobilization Forces responded to ISIS terrorist gangs in al-Asriya village area in al- Rashad sub-district, and this attack resulted in the injury of 4 fighters of the regiment.

On Tuesday evening, ISIS attacked a village in Dibis district in Kirkuk, and opened fire on the people, killing four people and wounding others.

According to a security source, all the victims are of Kurdish nationalism.

The attacks of suspected ISIS militants have increased in the past few months, especially in the governorates of Kirkuk, Salahuddin and Diyala.

In 2017, Iraq declared victory over ISIS by reclaiming its entire territory, which was estimated to be about a third of the country’s area invaded by the organization in the summer of 2014, but the organization still maintains sleeper cells in large areas of Iraq and launches attacks in varying periods.