IS has at least 200,000-strong army, says top Kurdish official

A senior Kurdish leader has reportedly said that the Islamic State (IS) has an army of at least 200,000 fighters, far larger than the previous estimates made by the Central Investigative Agency (CIA).

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, said that the IS' ability to carry attacks on widely separated areas in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that it has hundreds of thousands of fighters, a number that is at least seven or eight times bigger than the previous estimate of up to 31,500 men, reported The Independent.

He also added that the group rules over a third of Iraq and Syria with a population between 10 and 12 million living in an area of 250,000 square kilometres, the same size as Great Britain. This gives the militants a large pool of potential recruits, Hussein said.