ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least four soldiers of the Syrian regime were killed in a desert attack by Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Syria’s Raqqa province, a war monitor reported on Monday. “Four members of the regime forces were killed following an attack targeting military positions … south of the city of Tabqa in the western countryside of Raqqa,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. The monitor added that pro-regime reinforcements of the National Defense Forces (NDF) arrived to the site after the clashes. The NDF is a pro-government militia that has fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. ISIS attacks have been on the rise in Syria, particularly in the vast expanses of its eastern and northern deserts where the group launches surprise attacks amid a security vacuum. ISIS rose to power and seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land in a brazen offensive in 2014, declaring a so-called “caliphate.” While the group was declared territorially defeated in 2019, it still continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, especially across the vast expanses of the Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces.
