The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) killed 28 Syrian soldiers and pro-government fighters in two attacks carried out in areas controlled by the government in Syria, according to a new report Friday from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH). ). Despite its territorial defeat in Syria in 2019, the jihadist group, whose members are holed up in the vast Syrian desert, continues to carry out deadly attacks, mainly targeting pro-government forces and those led by the Kurds, allies of Washington.
Reign of terror
In a first attack Thursday evening,
“22 soldiers from the regular army and fighters from a pro-government faction were killed when IS jihadists opened fire on a military bus in the east of the province of Homs (center)
,” according to the OSDH, an NGO based in the United Kingdom and with a vast network of sources in the country at war. Most of the dead were members of a faction called the
"
Quds Brigade
"
comprising Palestinian fighters, she said.
Further east, near the border with Iraq,
“six Syrian soldiers died in another IS attack against a base near Boukamal
,” the NGO said, adding that two soldiers had been kidnapped. . A previous report reported 20 deaths in these attacks. Syrian state media made no immediate mention of the attacks.
At the end of March, IS jihadists
“executed”
eight Syrian soldiers after an ambush, according to the Observatory. ISIS took control of swaths of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming its
"caliphate"
and launching a reign of terror before being defeated in 2019 by an international anti-jihadist coalition led by the United States and the Kurdish forces. Since the start of the year, more than 268 pro-government soldiers and fighters have been killed in IS attacks, ambushes and explosions, particularly in the provinces of Deir Ezzor, Homs and Raqqa, according to the Observatory. The war in Syria, launched in 2011 after the government's brutal repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, has left more than half a million dead and millions displaced.