Arrested ISIS sympathisers in India have claimed that the person they communicated with had identified himself as Shafi Armar alias Yusuf al-Hindi.
Amid news of Islamic State (IS) slowly losing ground in Syria, reports suggest that a key ISIS man who was said to have been killed in a US airstrike last month is alive and has been recruiting men for the terror outfit in India.
According to a Hindustan Times report, IS recruiter Shafi Armar alias Yusuf al-Hindi, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka, is alive and looking for new members to join the Jihadi organisation.
“Some social media platforms announced Armar’s death, but as per our information, he is still communicating with prospective recruits who are under the scanner of security agencies for showing jehadi tendencies,” a senior officer with a central counter-terror group told the daily.
Armer is said to operate from Syria and had reportedly put together around two dozen ISIS sympathisers in India. Some of them arrested recently have reportedly told the interrogators that the person who communicates with them identifies himself as Yusuf al-Hindi from Bhatkal and is currently operating in Syria.
Armar is said to have started as a member of the banned militant outfit Indian Mujahideen. Quoting a counter terror officer, the report said that Armar fled to Pakistan in 2009 with a few of its top-ranking members before moving on to join the Islamic State.
Meanwhile, a senior US official said that Islamic State has not gained significant ground since it took the Iraqi city of Ramadi a year ago, which it then lost in December, as the US led coalition in Iraq and Syria has been helped by better intelligence and better equipped local forces.
Islamic State controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.
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