FAISALABAD: Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Monday that about 100 people had gone to Syria and Iraq to join the militant Islamic State (IS) group since its rise in the Middle East. He said some people of Daska, who were planning to go to Syria, had been taken into custody.

Talking to reporters on Monday, he said people from different countries had gone to Iraq and Syria to join the IS. Of them about 750 were British nationals.

He said that with the help of information provided by three women — Irshad Bibi, Farhana and Bushra who belonged to the Al Huda organisation — law-enforcement agencies had found some more people planning to join the IS.

The minister said the government would not let the IS to build its network in Pakistan and to achieve this goal capacity of law-enforcement agencies would be improved.

He said security agencies were making efforts to arrest those recruiting people for the IS in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2016