ISIS Is Surrounded, but Defeat in Mosul Could Unleash Jihad on the West

The battle to drive ISIS from western Mosul in Iraq rages on, and now Iraqi and U.S. coalition forces say they have the terror group surrounded.

There's now no way in or out of Iraq's second largest city, and military leaders say it's only a matter of time until they crush the jihadist group in its final Iraqi stronghold.

About 50,000 people have fled Mosul in the past month, and a lieutenant colonel with Iraqi intelligence estimates hundreds of Islamic State fighters fled among the civilians.

Meanwhile, 750,000 civilians remain in Mosul, and ISIS fighters are using many of them as human shields.

Those who have escaped the clutches of the Islamic State say the group withheld food from them, like sugar, rice and cooking oil.

But will Islamic State terror disappear once ISIS is driven from Iraq and Syria?

The Pentagon and Iraqi officials say senior ISIS leadership has escaped to regroup in Syria and the deserts along the border to prepare for the future.

And recently discovered documents reveal ISIS plans to resume suicide bombings in Iraq.

They also pledge to activate jihadist terror cells in the West.

"The Caliphate will not vanish," ISIS pledged in an internal publication found north of Mosul by Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a researcher with the Middle East Forum who studies the group.

"It adopts the idea that the Caliphate does not end with loss of territory, and the West, in particular, should realize the next generation of the Caliphate's soldiers are being nurtured within their borders," al-Tamimi said.