ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least seven pro-regime fighters were killed in Syria on Friday when Islamic State (ISIS) gunmen launched an attack on their positions near the Iraqi border, a war monitor reported.
ISIS “launched a violent attack targeting positions of regime forces and their proxy militias … in al-Bukamal countryside in Deir ez-Zor,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor.
“The attack left seven soldiers and militiamen dead,” it added.
ISIS rose to power in 2014, seizing vast swathes of Syrian and Iraqi land in a brazen offensive and declaring a so-called “caliphate.”
While the group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019, it still continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, especially across expanses of the Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces where there are security vacuums.
The militant group has been blamed for a string of attacks against Syrian regime forces throughout the year.
In early November, a deadly ISIS attack in the Syrian desert claimed the lives of 34 pro-regime fighters and army soldiers.
In August, an ISIS attack on Syrian army soldiers in the eastern Deir ez-Zor province killed 33, days after ten Syrian soldiers were killed in another ISIS attack in their former stronghold of Raqqa.
According to SOHR, at least 385 members of pro-regime forces and 165 civilians have been killed in ISIS attacks since January.
Syria’s civil war, that broke out in 2011 after the government’s brutal crackdown on protests, erupted into multiple fronts with the emergence of ISIS, fighting between Kurdish forces and Turkey and its proxies, Israeli strikes on pro-Iran factions, and tit-for-tat attacks between the US and Iranian proxies. Russia has backed the Syrian government, while about a thousand US troops are stationed in Syria to train and assist in the fight against ISIS.
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment