ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Several Iranian-backed militiamen were killed and injured in a suspected Islamic State (ISIS) attack on the force in the Syrian desert, a conflict monitor reported early Monday.
Four members of the Iran-backed militia were killed and two others were injured in an alleged ISIS offensive on a military site near al-Sukhna city in the eastern countryside of Homs, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
The desert, also known as Badia, is a strategically valuable area as it contains Syria’s crucial gas fields and the east-west highway, which connects Deir ez-Zor to both Homs and Damascus.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Security forces in Badia have arrested at least three members of the National Defense Forces for their suspected affiliation with ISIS, SOHR noted.
The recent attack comes a month after dozens of soldiers were killed and injured in an attack on a military bus in the Badia. ISIS was blamed for the offense at the time as well.
ISIS seized control of swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, declaring a so-called caliphate in 2014, but the terror group was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 respectively. The terror group continues to launch deadly attacks from the Syrian desert, which extends from Syria’s capital of Damascus to the Iraqi border.
Sixty-one pro-regime soldiers and Iran-affiliated militiamen were killed in alleged ISIS attacks in the desert since the beginning of the year, the monitor said last month, with 69 members of the terror group reported dead.
In its propaganda magazine on Thursday, ISIS claimed to have conducted two attacks in Syria from March 31 to April 6, killing and injuring four people.
Iranian-backed paramilitary groups and Lebanon's Hezbollah are fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces in the Syrian war, which started after a military crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests calling for his ousting. Tehran has been a strong supporter of Bashar al-Assad's government in Damascus.
