ISIS’s defeat at home prompts group to terrorise Europe

The Islamic State (ISIS) which created havoc in Syria and Iraq have now started terrorising Europe. The group's recent attack in Brussels came after four months of Paris attacks that left around 130 people dead.

Attacks in Europe seems an outcome of group's back to back setback in its stronghold Iraq and Syria.
Recently group has lost its control over millennia-old city of Palmyra in central Syria.

The Syrian army captured the airbase as part of the sweeping progress against the group. The city fell to the ISIS militants in May last year.

ISIS's deputy Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli who was dubbed as finance minister of the group was killed in a US airstrikes. al-Qaduli also known as Haji Iman and Abu Alaa al-Afri, carried a bounty of $7 million on his head.

That was second only to the $10 million offered for Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The group has also lost over than 10,000 fighters and 20 leaders.

According to some analysts his death came as heaviest blow to the ISIS.

ISIS has lost 40% of the 34,000 square miles of territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq before the US lead coalition started air strikes in the region in 2014.

In a major victory against ISIS, Iraqi forces retook Ramadi in Iraq captured by the terrorists in May 2014.

Last week's attack in Brussels that claimed at least 35 lives may be an attempt how that it still has the ability to inflict as much pain -- and is as dangerous to the West -- as ever, said an oped in CNN titled "ISIS terrorizes Europe but loses ground at home".

"ISIS has definitely faced losses and has increased its use of unconventional tactics, like suicide bombings, in order to draw forces away from the front," said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

"But linking the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels to ISIS' battlefield losses misses the point," she added, noting that ISIS has "been attempting to execute a global campaign for years" and "external attacks are key to its ideology."