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The words include answers to simple questions such as the would-be militant's birth date, blood type, address, marital status and countries visited.

German intelligence officials said they, too, have similar if not identical documents, though they didn't detail how they got them.

That means the people questioned could have gone into ISIS-controlled territory, have been turned away or perhaps fought for the terror group in Syria and Iraq and then perhaps left. If they aren't in the war zone, one fear is that they may bring their ISIS approach, tactics and mindset elsewhere -- perhaps proving a threat to other countries.

Koths said. "We are taking these into consideration of our law enforcement measures and security. "

We have seen the attacks perpetrated on mainland Europe over the past year,"

That is why it is so important for us to work together to counter this threat."

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Yemen is at the center of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region's biggest powers.

Iran is majority Shia Muslim and non-Arab. Most of the other countries in the region -- including, and led by, Saudi Arabia -- are majority Sunni Arab, and are suspicious of Iran's motives.

ou're talking about a major 24/7 war. The Saudis and the Emiratis -- the two countries with the most capacity in terms of air power -- are flying fighter jets over the skies of Yemen,

"The Arab states, including Jordan -- after the incident with the pilot [burned to death by ISIS when his plane crashed in Syria] -- are laying low,"

"ISIS doesn't just exist in Syria and Iraq -- it has major constituency supporters in almost all Arab countries, including Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan.

They're not just fighters, they play leadership roles -- and ISIS has carried out major attacks in Saudi, both against Shiite mosques and against (other) Saudi targets.

They say Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are also less inclined to carry out strikes against ISIS targets if doing so helps Iran's allies in Damascus and Baghdad.

"It is important for any intervening army to have the backing of the central government, or at least the army in the country," Sary says, "(including) the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who everyone will see as impossible to work with."

Even Germany, whose post-World War II constitution puts restrictions on fighting battles on foreign soil, is becoming increasingly involved.

appears that the involvement of the U.S.-led coalition's Arab members -- all of them much closer geographically to the terror group than their Western partners -- is drawing down.

Analysts say Yemen is at the center of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region's biggest powers.

Religion and ethnicity are at the heart of the longstanding hostility

The critical shift was the coalition in Yemen,

ISIS doesn't just exist in Syria and Iraq -- it has major constituency supporters in almost all Arab countries, including Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are also less inclined to carry out strikes against ISIS targets if doing so helps Iran's allies in Damascus and Baghda

There's been the idea that ISIS is a bigger challenge for Iran and its allies than it is for the Arab states, even though this feeling is changing now."

no individual country is likely to risk it, and no nation has a mandate to act on behalf of everyone else.

the over-involvement by the army in the internal affairs of the state has become acceptable, but when it comes to foreign intervention, it becomes problematic

Abu Bakr al Baghdad

rusader" countries and beyond.

indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets

, symbols of Western power or decadence

Beyond ISIS "branded" attacks -- those launched by affiliates and members -- ISIS also seeks to make political capital out of individuals who claim to be "inspired" by it, such as those in San Bernardino, California, in December and last week in Philadelphia.

stage of the investigation, there is no evidence accused gunman Edward Archer was part of an organized cell or that other attacks were in the works.

here is no doubting ISIS' lure to a fringe of extremist Muslims and Muslim converts

Istanbul, Jakarta, Philadelphia, multiple locations in Libya, the Russian republic of Dagestan: within the past two weeks all have been the target of attacks by ISIS supporters or affiliates, killing and wounding dozens of people.

An early indication that ISIS' leadership favored overseas attacks came when the Belgian jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud -- a high-profile member of the group, if only a lieutenant -- plotted a series of gun and bomb attacks against police stations

"Know that we want Paris -- by Allah's permission -- before Rome and before Spain, after we blacken your lives and destroy the White House, Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower."

the "caliph" himself, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, suggested ISIS will look for further opportunities to export its war to the "far abroad."

Throughout 2015, there was a steady stream of terror attacks that could be linked firmly to ISIS-associated groups, even if the relationship between them and the group's central leadership was often opaque

What, if any, role the central ISIS leadership had in the bombing of the Metrojet plane is still unknown. Its Sinai affiliate claimed the attack, and it was some time before the ISIS online publication Dabiq referred to it.

The suicide bomb attacks in Ankara were likely ordered by ISIS itself

The Paris attacks in November were a landmark: the first clearly organized and claimed by ISIS itself from Syria rather than the autonomous actions of affiliates or individuals.

t has a growing network of wilayat, or provinces -- places where it has an established presence such as Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan -- where government is weak and conflict endemic. In some instances it has sent fighters from Syria and Iraq to expand its presence in these places, most notably in Libya.

It also has a pool of experienced foreign fighters

The disappearance of one of the Paris attackers, Salah Abdeslam, and several alleged co-conspirators suggests ISIS may have a network of safe houses and travel facilitators in Europe

The Iraqi government and much of its military officer corps are mostly made up of Shi’a Muslims, whereas much of the areas ISIS has retained in Iraq are predominantly Sunni

the Iraqi military forces are often operating in areas where the local population may be more willing to tolerate, or even support ISIS

authorities in the U.S. announced they had arrested an Ohio man and ISIS supporter who planned to bomb the U.S. Capitol.

ISIS primarily focused its attention on its regional ambitions prior to the U.S.-led bombing campaig

One of the gunmen in a dual terror attack in Paris in January 2015 claimed that he was part of ISIS, though the other shooters in that attack were linked to an al Qaeda affiliate.

The U.S.-led coalition against ISIS expanded its aggressive bombing campaign against the group into Syria in September 2014 and has bombarded the terror group virtually daily since.

, Western intelligence agencies are concerned about those who travel to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS before coming back home.

Dabiq is a town in northern Syria currently held by ISIS where, according to Islamic prophecy, the armies of Rome will mass to meet the armies of Islam.

And according to those prophecies, the Islamic armies will ultimately conquer Jerusalem and Rome.

Libya is the only other country where ISIS holds territory -- the coastal town of Sirte and other patches along the Mediterranean

The revival of the caliphate is the launching pad for a global battlefield. No caliph can govern without pursuing offensive jihad, and that jihad will continue, as Dabiq put it, until "the shade of the blessed flag will expand until it covers all eastern and western extents of the Earth."

"There will come a time when three armies of Islam shall simultaneously rise, one in the Levant, one in Yemen and one in Iraq."

It is powerful motivation to ISIS supporters, and it's also a message to Muslims: The end of times is at hand, and if you want to be a true Muslim, on the right side of history, you had better join us.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said it was an obligation to establish the caliphate and therefore to recognize him as caliph.

A caliphate can only exist if it holds territory: ISIS' raison d'etre is to sustain and expand

ISIS followers -- and Dabiq -- are fond of quoting the words of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the "spiritual" father of the movement and leader of al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in 2006.

No matter that the majority of Muslims -- even many jihadists - see ISIS' interpretations of the Quran and the hadith as manipulations or distortions.

Libyan territory can also be (and has been) the platform for launching terror attacks in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

But ISIS' ambitions run much further -- it has established a presence in Yemen, Afghanistan and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

ISIS does not recognize the borders of nation states that make up the modern world nor the idea of a democratic state or citizenship.

"The Islamic State does not recognize synthetic borders, nor any citizenship besides Islam," he declared in 2012.

"We won't enjoy life until we liberate the Muslims everywhere, and until we retrieve Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and regain Al-Andalus (Andalucia in Spain), and conquer Rome," Adnani said in 2013.

ISIS wants to stir religious hatred in Europe and the United States -- so that Muslims no longer feel they belong in the West, and either carry out attacks in their homelands or leave to join the caliphate.

It has already shown extreme cruelty toward Shiites -- most notably slaughtering more than 1,500 Iraqi air force cadets in Tikrit in June 2014.

And it sees the United States as complicit in supporting a Shia government in Iraq.

Embroiling the U.S. and the West in a land war -- ISIS reasons -- would give Muslims no choice but to come to the defense of the caliphate, setting up a global confrontation.

"Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse,"

"We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it."

There is no way to independently verify the reports by the Observatory and SANA; other opposition outlets have put the number of casualties lower.

The Observatory also reported Saturday that ISIS had killed or executed some 50 soldiers and 85 civilians during its offensive against al-Bagaliyeh.

Fighting between government and ISIS forces continued Monday, the Observatory reported.

The ISIS-affiliated news agency Aamaq said Sunday that 167 regime fighters had been killed and many more wounded. A video released by ISIS Sunday purported to show heavy artillery and tanks being used as well as abandoned regime positions.

Neighborhoods where the regime is holding out have been under siege by ISIS for a year, with medical supplies and food scarce and generators the only source of electricity. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported massive price inflation, as products had to be smuggled across the Euphrates River.

ISIS has stepped up offensives against several of these areas.

several neighborhoods, capturing and killing dozens of Syrian soldiers but also seizing many civilians, according to reports from activists.

As ISIS has gone on the offensive, Russia has stepped up its support for the regime in and around the city.

As the situation has worsened, some civilians have managed to escape the city, which had nearly 1.5 million inhabitants before the Syrian conflict began

Most of the city has been controlled by ISIS for well over a year, but some neighborhoods and the military airport to the south have remained in the hands of the regime

Most of the city has been controlled by ISIS for well over a year, but some neighborhoods and the military airport to the south have remained in the hands of the regime

In contrast, the U.S. military during its last war in Iraq had access to thousands of Iraqi prisoners—and the intelligence they provided. But observers said the lack of detainees this time around reflects an ISIS eager to fight. And it shows the limits of a war in a city littered with bombs and tunnels, and home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

You can’t do these capture operations in the middle of the urban warfare. It’s too dangerous

In the war against ISIS in Mosul, the number of fighters detained is the dog that doesn’t bark. ISIS repeatedly has urged its troops to fight to the death, declaring anything short of that punishable by execution.

Human Rights Watch offered a more troubling explanation for the lack of reported detainees, saying it believes that Iraqi and Kurdish forces have detained “at least 37 men from areas around Mosul and Hawija suspected of being affiliated with the Islamic State” and that government officials have not allowed those detainees to make outside contact.

To be sure, both Iraqi and Kurdish forces have arrested hundreds of fighters but what it is less clear is how many have remained in custody.

There are international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war but each nation decides how to treat its own criminals. And therefore it is up to the Iraqi government if it will expend resources to bring a case against a prisoner through its tenuous court system.

When roughly 100 ISIS fighters launched a surprise attack last month on the Iraqi city of Rutbah, for example, half the ISIS fighters involved were killed in the 36-hour battle, U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian told The Daily Beast.

There could be more ISIS detainees in the weeks ahead, as Iraqi Security Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters start the block-by-block clearance of Mosul, Pentagon officials said, as it will be much harder for ISIS militants to flee in that urban environment. Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces first reached the city borders last week.

The U.S. troops joining local forces in the push against Mosul are only there in an advisory role, Pentagon officials have said.

Fighting that insurgency cost as much as $2 trillion, according to one estimate, and the lives of nearly 5,000 American troops

And it likely would fall to nascent Iraqi fighters, who just two years ago ditched their weapons and uniforms in Mosul, to repel ISIS and launch a counterinsurgency.

Volesky warned that such attacks in liberated areas are one reason the U.S. is advising the Iraqi and Kurdish forces charged with liberating Mosul to move deliberately. Fas

But there are alternatives. Al Qaeda, for example, has embraced local Sunnis, not terrorized them, allowing the group to return to areas and recruit members.

But that timetable could shift. In the last week, ISIS has lost a number of key cities in a matter of days. And in those battles, the group appears to be on the defensive before abandoning territory altogether. Most notably, ISIS lost the Syrian city of

After its defeat, ISIS said the promised apocalyptic battle would come at a later, unspecified date.

A series of attacks last week killed at least 55 people in Baghdad. And in July, at least 324 people died when a truck bomb struck a popular shopping area in central Baghdad, the deadliest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.

But after two years of brutal reign, ISIS may not be able to attract Sunnis to its insurgency. Not after the terror group that robbed their cities, beheaded their citizens, and made crimes of smoking, shaving, and playing music.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces are now as far as 20 miles outside Mosul’s city center. The U.S. military has said the operation could last anywhere from weeks to months.

And it is possible that ISIS, in taking credit for bombings, is exploiting the frustration of other groups seeking to upend the current Iraqi government.

Or just as likely, the U.S. military is wrong. After all, last year, U.S. commanders forecasted an ISIS expansion in Libya, which instead flailed

While Turkey is not the only country that might put the ouster of Mr. Assad ahead of defeating the radical Sunnis of the Islamic State, the White House has strongly argued that the immediate threat is from the militants.

“The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so. We need to act now,”

At the end of last year, Isis published its penal code which lists amputation, stoning and crucifixion as the required punishments for certain crimes.

But it came as a US official attending a Paris summit said that some 10,000 Isis fighters have been killed by US-led coalition air strikes since they began last year.

None of them have been able to attend school -- or at least a real school.

There is no education. Five to 11-year-old kids are in the same class. Teachers don't show up and older kids harass them."

"You can count the number of doctors on one hand and they only service ISIS. Every day hundreds gather for free food hand outs. It's not a lot. You stand there being humiliated trying to get something to eat."

"ISIS gives anything for free to people who join them. The rest of us get nothing. There is no food, electricity or money. The people join ISIS out of hunger.

Electricity lasts for roughly 12 hours a day.

"Generally, the strikes kill a relatively low number of ISIS fighters. When we were in Raqqa city, for example, the court (was) hit three times. It was empty.

Following the French airstrikes, ISIS cracked down on internet usage, fearing their targets might be revealed.

We've seen a lot of people who've been beheaded and killed, accused of being spies."

Kids, some as young as 10, patrol the street. They are trained in ISIS camps."You can see a 10-year-old kid holding a Russian AK47. It's surreal," he said. "That kids can shout at you and sometimes they stop you and you can't say anything because he is a member of ISIS."

hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees making the dangerous journey to Europe's shores.

It's believed to be the first time that ISIS has killed a female citizen journalist in Syria

one of a number of young activists in Raqqa who tried to get word to the outside world of what was really happening in the city.

"I'm in Raqqa and I received death threats, and when ISIS (arrests) me and kills me it's ok because they will cut my head and I have dignity it's better than I live in humiliation with ISIS."

Hassan mocked ISIS' attempts to ban Wi-Fi hotspots in Raqqa.

"These days I'm thinking about rest... about peace... about safety... about feeling reassured..."

She wrote about everyday life under ISIS rule, about coalition airstrikes as they rocked the city -- with humor, sadness and a glint of hope.

several of the Raqqa group have been assassinated in Turkey or killed inside the so-called caliphate established by ISIS,

She wanted a free and democratic Syria

The U.S.-led airstrike campaign has increasingly assaulted ISIS logistical operations, forcing the terror group to retreat from territory it once controlled. Such losses have made it harder for ISIS to move weapons, food, and fighters around the self-proclaimed caliphate and appear to have weakened the group’s ability to expand its state across the Middle East and Africa.

as it appears ISIS has instead spread its foreign fighters across the region to places like Libya and Egypt. The terror group has even asked recruits to stay in Europe and attack from there.

The potential fall of Manbij with the help of the Kurds, along with the fall of areas around Raqqa, suggest that the U.S. is willing to risk creating potential new tensions to rid the northern city of ISIS.

Last week, ISIS targeted two of Libya's largest export terminals—Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, which handle 80 percent of Libya's oil reserves. Combined, they have the capacity to ship 500,000 barrels today, barring civil war and terrorist hindrances. For the past year, these two export terminals have been closed down, but ISIS has plans to reopen them—eventually.

ISIS succeeds, it will generate significant revenues from selling Libyan oil domestically.

Libya has been in grave danger since the fall of Ghaddafi. Today, Libya is only generating half the oil revenues it was prior to 2011.

ISIS executed about 40 people celebrating the "liberation" of their villages by Iraqi forces, a Mosul official said

ISIS has been in control of Mosul for two years, giving its fighters plenty of time to fortify defenses, and the militants have time and time again proved themselves adept at bloody, urban warfare.

The offensive is remarkable for both its speed and the level of cooperation that this disparate group is showing in the face of its common enemy

The coalition force, which vastly exceeds ISIS' numbers, is closing in on the beleaguered city, still home to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 civilians.

Better than expected gains

ISIS executed about 40 people who were celebrating the apparent liberation of their villages by Iraqi forces, a Mosul City Council official said Sunday, citing local sources.

190 former Iraqi Security Forces

October 17, ISIS has taken "tens of thousands" of men, women and children from the outskirts of Mosul into the city.

civilians being murdered as ISIS tries to herd people into its last stronghold in Iraq

had evacuated 5,000 to 6,000 civilians from there.

"90% surrounded Hammam al-Alil,"

Iraqi security forces might storm Hammam al-Alil in the next few hours but that it would depend on the situation on the ground,

using a "scorched earth" policy by destroying houses, buildings and bridges to slow down the advancing Iraqi security forces, he said.

US and its allies have killed between 800 and 900 ISIS fighters

3,000 to 5,000 ISIS fighters defending the last major stronghold

additional 1,500 to 2,000 ISIS soldiers in a zone outside the city

sian spiesBy Michael Martinez, CNNUpdated 8:55 AM ET, Thu January 15, 2015

The Kurds had expected it would take them weeks to defeat ISIS in Tal Abyad. In the end, victory took just two days.

Kurdish forces have now liberated the frontier town but ISIS' merciless reign of terror is still evident in its semi-deserted streets.

The people gathered here don't want to talk on camera. They say they have relatives in Raqqa, where ISIS is firmly in control.

1,000 lira (Syrian pounds -- roughly equivalent to $4.60),

In one of the ISIS security buildings, the militants' black flag still ominously dominates the walls.

Tal Abyad came under ISIS control a short while later. Rather than flee to neighboring Turkey, the family chose to stay -- begrudgingly obeying ISIS' draconian laws

Puntland region of northern Somalia, and thus unlikely to be persecuted or reached by the Amniyat, which operates mostly in southern Somalia.

Sources within Somalia's security apparatus estimate that about 100 fighters would likely defect to ISIS, among the estimated 1,400-strong insurgent group.

"Al-Shabaab won't have a jihadi legitimacy if they don't have muhajideen (foreign fighters) within their ranks," the source said. "They were built on welcoming foreign fighters, and having them in the movement's hierarchy from the very first day."

One analyst explained ISIS' effectiveness in using modern technology to recruit new members

l-Shabaab's leadership, however, is still very much pro-al Qaeda. Its most recent propaganda video, showing a deadly attack on Burundian soldiers fighting for the African Union in Southern Somalia, used quotes from the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the group's current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. "This is a subtle way of intimating the leadership's loyalty to al Qaeda," says a source close to Somalia's intelligence service, NISA.

"Many Muhajirs (foreign fighters and members of the diaspora) were trying to leave and the harakah (leadership) is trying to make them stay."

ISIS may be more appealing to younger, more impressionable jihadis.

Nigeria's Boko Haram group and now to East Africa, potentially as far as the borders of Kenya.

The defection also shows a certain division within its ranks. The source close to Al-Shabaab told CNN he thought it was "the worst idea ever."

Somalia said its battle against terrorists will not be affected by any name changes.

r they change their name, affiliation or not," said Abdisalam Aato, the government spokesman.

Lebanese intelligence believes the bombers could be part of a cell dispatched to Beirut by ISIS leadership, the source said, but investigators are still working to verify the surviving suspect's claim

Last month at least 95 people were killed in twin bombings in Turkey's capital, Ankara, ripping through a peace rally near the city's main train station

The attack may have been retaliation for a recent change in Turkey's stance toward confronting the ISIS threat -- shortly before the attacks it had allowed the U.S. to launch strikes on ISIS from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.

Russia's recent, increased involvement in the fight against ISIS has seemingly escalated the terror group's responses.

Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, in which all 224 people on board were killed, the recent attacks in Lebanon and France suggest that the jihadists are lashing out.

A revelation Sunday that at least one of the Paris terrorists who killed more than 120 people on Friday entered Europe under cover as a refugee appears likely to fire up the security debate over what to do with them

Eventually, he made his way to Paris, where he was one of three men who blew themselves up at the Stade de France.

Seven people have been arrested in relation to the attacks in the raids, he said.

The authorities there have been making headway, however. At the beginning of the year a terror cell on the brink of carrying out an attack was the target of a raid which left two suspects dead and a third injured and apprehended.

Abu Nabil, an Iraqi national and longtime al Qaeda operative, was taken out in an airstrike authorized and initiated prior to the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

he infamous masked British executioner, who has apparently appeared in a number of gruesome videos in which ISIS captives were decapitated, was very likely killed in a drone strike earlier in the month.

Obama met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of this weekend's G20 summit in Turkey and reportedly reached an informal agreement that there was a necessity for a ceasefire and transitional government in Syria to effectively combat the threat.