The Islamic State (IS) terror group is reorganising and ramping up its guerrilla-style attacks in Syria and Iraq, the United Nations’ counter-terrorism chief has warned, adding that the crisis unleashed by coronavirus could make it easier to recruit a new generation of jihadists. More than 10,000 IS fighters remain at large in Iraq and Syria, more than two years after the militant group’s claimed defeat, Vladamir Voronokov, the head of the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Office said. “Small cells” of jihadists continue to move freely between the two countries to carry out ambushes, arson, and gun and bomb attacks, while the group and its affiliates have also claimed to be behind recent terrorism in Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and West Africa, he added. In a briefing to the UN Security Council last night Mr Voronokov said that travel restrictions and national lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic appeared to have temporarily reduced the risk of terrorist attacks in Europe. But the former Russian diplomat added that IS and other terror groups would try “to exploit the far-reaching disruption and negative socioeconomic and political impacts of the pandemic.”