At least 70 Americans have either travelled to Syria, or tried to, since the militants started their deadly fight against the government and people loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Senior American intelligence officials have warned that some American citizens, who have visited Syria, might be recruited by al-Qaeda-linked insurgent groups to attack targets inside the United States.
The insurgents are trying to identify, recruit and train Americans and other Westerners who have traveled to Syria to get them to carry out terrorist attacks when they return home, The New York Times reports.
The insurgent groups, who have been fighting the Syrian government for the past two and a half years, are becoming a serious threat not for the European nations but for the United States, too, the officials warned. But they also said that the groupsâ„¢ efforts are in the early stages.
At least 70 Americans have either travelled to Syria, or tried to, since the militants started their deadly fight against the government and people loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, intelligence officials said.
The FBI is now trying to track the citizens who have returned home from Syria.
Å“We are focused on trying to figure out what our people are up to, who should be spoken to, who should be followed, who should be charged,” FBI Director James B. Comey said. Å“I mean, itâ„¢s hard for me to characterize beyond that. Itâ„¢s something we are intensely focused on.”
The FBI is conducting costly round-the-clock surveillance on a small number of the citizens returning from the Arab country, according to the officials.
Around 10,000 of the militants, including many foreign nationals, are fighting for groups affiliated with al-Qaeda such as the al-Nusra Front and the rest fight for different militant groups.
Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since March 2011. The UN says more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced due to the violence.
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Source: Press TV