“A member of the National Defense Forces [NDF] was killed and two others injured in an attack carried out by Islamic State members … in Palmyra in the eastern countryside of Homs,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor.
The NDF is a pro-government militia that has fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s army 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.
On Friday, an ISIS car bomb attack killed three members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the eastern Deir ez-Zor province.
