“Nine members of the regime forces were killed and 3 others injured in an attack by members of the Islamic State on a gathering of regime forces” in the central Hama province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor.
ISIS has recently ramped up its attacks in Syria, particularly in the desert, known as the Badia. It is a strategically valuable area which contains Syria’s crucial gas fields and the highway which connects Deir ez-Zor to Homs, Hama, and Damascus.
On January 9, an ISIS attack on a bus carrying Syrian regime troops in Homs province killed at least 14 soldiers.
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 both countries in 2017 and 2019 respectively, 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.
At least 34 pro-government forces and army soldiers were killed in an ISIS attack in the Syrian desert in November.
