Iraq trying to stop IS fighters crossing border
Hundreds, likely more than 1,000, IS fighters have crossed the open, desert border in the past six months, defying a massive operation by US, Kurdish, and allied forces to stamp out the remnants of the jihadi group in eastern Syria.
The Iraqi army has deployed more than 20,000 troops to guard the frontier, but militants are slipping across, mostly to the north of the conflict zone, in tunnels or under the cover of night.
Others are entering Iraq disguised as cattle herders.
They are bringing with them currency and light weapons, according to intelligence reports, and digging up money and arms from caches they stashed away when they controlled a vast swath of northern Iraq.
Islamic State fighters facing defeat in Syria are slipping across the border into Iraq, where they are destabilising the country's fragile security, US and Iraqi officials say.
Cells operating in four northern provinces are carrying out kidnappings, assassinations, and roadside ambushes aimed at intimidating locals and restoring the extortion rackets that financed the group's rise to power six years ago.
In Syria, Kurdish-led forces backed by the U.S.-led coalition have cornered the militants in a pocket less than one square kilometer in Baghouz, a Euphrates River village near the 600-kilometre (370-mile) border.
At its height in 2014 and 2015, the Islamic State group ruled over a self-proclaimed "caliphate" that spanned one-third of Iraqi and Syrian territory.
The extremist offshoot of Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to exterminate religious minorities.
Iraqi forces, with U.S., Iranian, and other international help, were able to turn the war around and Baghdad declared victory over the group in December 2017, after the last urban battle had been won.
But precursors to IS have recovered from major setbacks in the past, and many fear the militants could stage a comeback. The group is already waging a low-level insurgency in rural areas.
