Near dozen from U.S. said on Islamic State side

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies said they have identified nearly a dozen Americans who have traveled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State extremist group.

As the Islamic State has seized large expanses of territory in recent months, it has drawn more foreign men to Syria, requiring more U.S. and European law enforcement resources in the attempt to stop the flow of fighters, senior U.S. officials said. And as a result of the increasing numbers of men, the Islamic State is recruiting foreign women as jihadi wives.

Overall, U.S. intelligence officials said the number of Americans who had joined rebel groups in Syria — not just the Islamic State — has nearly doubled since January. The officials now believe that more than 100 Americans have fought alongside groups there since the civil war began three years ago.

U.S. officials say their concerns about the recruitment and training of Americans are based on intelligence gathered from travel records, family members, intercepted electronic communications, social media postings and surveillance of Americans overseas who have expressed interest in going to Syria.

Senior U.S. officials acknowledge that as the conflict in Syria and Iraq drags on, it is becoming more difficult to track Americans who have traveled there. In many instances, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies are learning that Americans are there only long after they have arrived.

The FBI on Thursday said it was attempting to verify reports that two more Americans had been killed fighting for the Islamic State in Syria.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, at least four Americans have died fighting for rebel groups — including Douglas McAuthur McCain, 33, a Minnesota man who was fighting for the Islamic State when he was killed last weekend by a rival group backed by the United States.

McCain’s high school friend Troy Kastigar also was recruited by a terror group to leave the United States and die for a jihadist cause.

Both young men attended Robbinsdale Cooper High School in the Minneapolis suburb of New Hope. Kastigar was in the Class of 1999, though he left school in February of that year without a diploma, according to school records. McCain went to Robbinsdale from 1997 to 1999, before transferring to nearby Armstrong High School. He also did not graduate.

“They were really funny guys. They were goofy. They were just always laughing, hanging out together, joking around. They were just nice,” said Alicia Adams, a former classmate who was friends with both McCain and Kastigar in high school.

There was nothing in their background or behavior to “make you think they would become an extremist or a killer or anything of the sort,” she said Thursday.

U.S. officials confirmed this week that McCain, 33, was killed in Syria. Officials have said Kastigar was killed in Somalia in September 2009 while fighting with the terror group al-Shabab.

Anders Folk, a former federal prosecutor who handled the al-Shabab cases in Minnesota, said it’s noteworthy that two converts with no familial ties to Syria or Somalia latched on to the most extreme interpretation of Islam.

“The fact that two guys from the Midwest, from Minnesota, could both be recruited by different terrorist organizations in different foreign countries shows how effective the rhetoric is at converting certain people to the cause,” Folk said. “It also shows that the message isn’t about where you go or what country you go to, but the message is about joining the fight. And that message is resonating with young men in America.”

Information for this article was contributed by Michael S. Schmidt, Eric Schmitt and staff members of The New York Times and by Amy Forliti, Brian Bakst and Rhonda Shafner of The Associated Press.

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