Up to 6,000 Africans who fought for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Iraq and Syria could return home, the African Union warned. Smail Chergui, the AU’s commissioner for peace and security, said on Sunday that African nations would need to work closely with each other and share intelligence to counter returning militants, AFP reported. “There are reports of 6,000 African fighters among the 30,000 foreign elements who joined this terrorist group in the Middle East,” Chergui told a meeting in Algiers. Tens of thousands of foreign fighters joined the Sunni jihadist group after it seized vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate in 2014.