Los Angeles Times: Thousands of Foreign Terrorists Joining Armed Groups in Syria, Iraq

 WASHINGTON-Thousands of foreign terrorists have bolstered the ranks of armed groups in Syria and Iraq in recent months, according to U.S. officials, driving fresh concern about potential terrorist plots aimed at the United States or its allies, according to the Los Angeles Times reporters Brian Bennett, Richard A. Serrano.

In their article, the writers said the surge, as well as intelligence that Yemeni terrorists have developed a powerful cell phone bomb designed to avoid detection at airports, is behind the Obama administration’s increasingly urgent warnings that a European or American passport holder might try to take down a passenger jet or plan other deadly mayhem.

As many as 10,000 foreign terrorists- a third more than in February -have joined the armed groups, including the “State in Iraq and Levant Terrorist organization, seeking to fight the Syrian state, the writers added citing a counter-terrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified assessments.

They pointed out  that as many as 3,000 of these terrorists hold European or other Western passports and thus can travel easily across most borders. Several dozen, perhaps as many as 100, hold U.S. passports, and officials say that number is growing.

According to the reporters, the potential partnership between some of those Westerners and sophisticated bomb makers from the Yemen-based Al Qaeda has raised alarm in Washington and other capitals.

“It’s something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. told ABC News last week. “In some ways, it’s more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general.”

FBI Director James B. Comey told reporters in Washington that the threat “keeps me up at night.” He sees the region as a “launching ground” for potential Sept. 11-style mass-casualty attacks in this country.

Two U.S. citizens have been arrested on terrorism-related charges since April before boarding flights to Turkey, suspected of being on their way to help gunmen. In May, a Florida man became a suicide bomber in northern Syria.

“It’s the largest number of Western fighters we have ever seen in a jihadist theater,” the writers quoted Seth G. Jones, a former U.S. counter-terrorism official now with the Rand Corp. think tank, as saying.

The Los Angeles Times said, citing British officials, that between January and March, at least 40 people in Britain were arrested on charges related to supporting armed groups in Syria. The British Home Office, empowered by a law Parliament passed in May, has stripped at least 20 people of their citizenship for suspected terrorism support or disloyalty, the newspaper added.

H. Mustafa