The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, reported that ISIS sleeper cells carried out an attack against a special tasks division of the Syrian army in the eastern countryside of Homs.
“The attack resulted in the killing of an officer with the rank of lieutenant and two other members of the division,” SOHR reported.
The attack comes at a time when the Syrian regime has sent military reinforcements to areas in the Syrian desert, preparing for a search campaign for ISIS sleeper cells, according to SOHR.
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 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.
The Kurdish-led and US-backed SDF, who control northeast Syria (Rojava), fought the lion’s share of the battle against ISIS and arrested thousands of the terror group’s fighters along with their wives and children when they crushed ISIS territorially and took the group’s last stronghold in Syria in 2019.
In late March, the SDF warned that ISIS still poses a threat to the world and the region as its defeat “requires dismantling its ideological breeding ground,”
According to SOHR data, 372 individuals have lost their lives in ISIS attacks since early 2024.
Civilians were also among the casualties of the attacks, as 37 people were killed in attacks by ISIS in the Syrian desert, including a child and a woman.
