NATO plans biggest exercise since 2002 to counter Islamic State

NATO and its allies will hold their biggest military exercise in more than a decade from October, deploying 36,000 personnel across the Mediterranean to counter the threat of Islamic State on the alliance's southern flank.

Briefly turning attention away from Russia, NATO commanders said on Wednesday the alliance would carry out some of its toughest training yet in a complex "artificial threat scenario" in which militants attack on land, from the air and at sea.

"We cannot choose between the eastern threat and the southern threat, we have to train for both," said General Hans-Lothar Domrose, commander of the NATO military command in Brunssum, the Netherlands, who is preparing the exercise.

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