Foreign militants flock to join ISIS branch in Somalia

The small but influential Islamic State terrorist group in Somalia is growing, in part due to what the United Nations calls an “influx of foreign fighters.”

According to Voice of America, a new report issued this week by the United Nations sanctions monitoring team in Somalia warned that fighters, including some from countries in the Middle East, have helped the Islamic State in Somalia, also known as ISIS Somalia, double its size to between 600 and 700 fighters.

“Foreign fighters are arriving in Puntland [Somalia] using maritime and land routes,” says the report, which is based on intelligence assessments from UN member states.

The report said foreign fighters “expanded and enhanced the group’s capabilities,” boosting ISIS’s presence in Somalia’s Puntland region while also helping it seize territory from its main rival, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabab.

Intelligence sources described ISIS’s advance in Somalia, particularly in the Alamskad Mountains of Puntland, as a “radical change,” and attributed the change in ISIS’s fortunes in Somalia to foreign fighters.

The UN report said ISIS foreign fighters came from at least six countries: Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, Morocco and Tanzania. It also said some captured foreign fighters reported working with trainers from parts of the Middle East.