About 1,000 volunteers from the Asia-Pacific region have sought to join the Islamic State group, a senior military officer said Thursday.
Admiral Samuel
Locklear, who oversees American forces across Asia as head of Pacific Command,
gave the estimate a day after the United States
pushed for a resolution committing major powers to block the movement of
foreign fighters to Iraq and
Syria
"It
certainly is an issue that we're paying very close attention to today,"
Locklear told a press conference in Washington
"There's
probably been about 1,000 potential aspiring fighters that have moved from this
region, based on kind of our overall assessment.
"That number
could get larger as we go forward, but certainly that's about the size or the
magnitude that we perceive at this point in time," the admiral said.
Locklear also
said the expanded air war against the IS group in Iraq and Syria did not mean a
strategic US "rebalance" to the Asia-Pacific would be scaled back,
saying that the American military would continue to pursue its plan to bolster
its presence and defense ties in the area.
President Barack
Obama underscored growing concerns about foreign fighters flocking to the Middle East at a special session of the UN Security
Council on Thursday.
Obama chaired the
meeting that saw the adoption of a resolution demanding governments prevent
recruitment and all forms of aid to foreign fighters, making it illegal to
collect funds or help organize their travel.
An Islamist
militant band in the Philippines
The Abu Sayyaf,
considered a "foreign terrorist organization" by the United States
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