'Surprise ISIS attack' kills 19 Syrian regime, allied fighters: monitor

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — At least 19 Syrian regime forces and allied militiamen were killed in an attack launched by the Islamic State (ISIS) group in the Badia region of central Syria, according to a UK-based war monitor.

Those killed in the attack include 11 militants from the Iran-backed Baqer Brigade, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Wednesday. 

ISIS propaganda outlet Amaq News Agency said on Wednesday that their fighters clashed with the Syrian army, “killing 13 soldiers and wounding others” in the Hama desert and setting a vehicle on fire. 

ISIS was declared territoriality defeated in Syria in 2019 and in Iraq in 2017, but the group remains a threat on both sides of the border, including carrying out hit-and-run attacks and abductions.
 
As a result of the attack, violent clashes erupted between the two sides, resulting in deaths among ISIS members, to which SOHR was unable to document numbers.

The remote desert areas of eastern Syria are an ISIS stronghold and the militants have kept a presence in the area, killing at least 1,170 regime soldiers and loyalists since the group's territorial defeat in Syria in late March 2019, the Observatory reported in early January.  

ISIS has maintained a "low-level insurgency in Iraq and Syria," the Pentagon stated in a report covering July to September 2020 and published in November. During this time in Syria, ISIS carried out more "'high-quality attacks' in regime-held areas, including complex ambushes and targeted assassinations." 

"ISIS took advantage of the permissive environment created by sparsely populated desert terrain and lack of an effective counterterrorism campaign by pro-regime forces," the report stated.

The group could regain control of territory in Syria and Iraq “without sustained [counterterrorism] pressure… in a relatively short period of time,” said General Kenneth McKenzie, US CENTCOM commander. 

Updated at 10:54 am on February 4, 2021