The wives of Islamic State jihadis told Kurdistan’s Rudaw news agency on Thursday that they are immune to the Chinese coronavirus, claiming that it is a form of divine retribution from Allah against infidels and non-Muslims.

Rudaw visited the wives and relatives of Islamic State terrorists kept at the al-Hol camp in Syrian Kurdistan. Asking them if they are concerned about the Chinese virus, the jihadis replied the pandemic is a form of divine retribution towards “crusader nations” who reject the teachings of Islam.

“Muslims won’t die of this virus, only infidels will,” one of the wives explained. “God has sent his army. This is one of God’s soldiers.”

Northeast Syria has not documented any cases, but those managing the Al-Hol camp do not currently have the necessary equipment to test individuals for the coronavirus. The few individuals tested need to wait for their samples to travel to Damascus and back. Northern Syria is controlled by Kurdish militias, while Damascus is still in the hands of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

According to expert Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, cited by Rudaw, the Islamic State urged their fighters in a newsletter to exploit the fact that most nations on preoccupied with containing its spread.

Al-Tamimi provided both a translation and summary of the newsletter, where the ISIS leadership explain that the “crusader nations have become preoccupied with security in their own lands, deploying some of their own security forces and armies in light of the epidemic and its current and potential ramifications on things like the economy, prices of goods, and the potential for chaos and disorder.”

He continues:

The ‘Crusaders’ also face the pressures of their external military deployments at a time when they have been seeking to bring their troops home, even as they seek to reduce the likelihood of ‘mujahideen’ attacks against them inside their own countries and elsewhere. The last thing they want is for their current tribulations with the pandemic to coincide with the attacks in their own countries like the attacks in Paris, London and Brussels, or for the ‘mujahideen’ to conquer parts of the Earth as occurred in the past.

There is evidence that the pandemic has also failed to slow the current Islamic State insurgency, with the group staging a minor resurgence across Syria. Two Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were killed and another wounded following an attack on Tuesday evening, while on Thursday militants also killed two Popular Mobilization Forces fighters near Al-Sadeq military airport.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the caliphate carried out a large scale attack on al-Sokhna town in Syria’s eastern province of Homs, killing 27 regime soldiers and loyalist militiamen. At least 22 jihadis were later killed by retaliatory Russian airstrikes, the group added.

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