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Monday, July 10, 2017

ISIS Sanctuary: July 18, 2017

By Alexandra Gutowski, Jessa Rose Dury-Agri, and Jessica Lewis McFate

ISW is issuing a correction to the map published on July 10, 2017. The three corrections are circled as changes on this version. ISW removed ISIS’s control zone in eastern Qalamoun, northeast of Damascus. ISIS retreated from this zone on 25 MAY 2017. ISW expanded ISIS’s control zone east of Tel Afar, west of Mosul. ISIS held this terrain from 2014 onward, which ISW had under-represented historically. ISW refined an estimate for ISIS’s support zones in Idlib province. ISIS re-infiltrated Idlib province in 2015, in conjunction with its loss of critical border crossings in Aleppo and Raqqa provinces. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda linked groups are presently attempting to disrupt ISIS’s operations in Idlib.