ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least 19 Syrian regime soldiers were killed on Wednesday in separate deadly Islamic State (ISIS) attacks in the desert, a war monitor said, amid a large-scale combing operation by Damascus against the jihadists.
“16 members of regime forces, including a high-ranking officer, were killed after entering a minefield and being attacked by ISIS members while regime forces were on a combing mission in Sukhna desert in Homs,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
Damascus, with Russian air support, has been carrying out an expansive sweeping operation in areas where ISIS remains active, with a recent rise in deadly jihadist attacks killing many Syrian government soldiers, as well as pro-regime National Defense Forces (NDF) fighters.
In a separate attack later on Wednesday, ISIS gunmen killed “three members of the regime forces, including an officer,” in the Homs desert and injured two others, the Observatory said.
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 Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces.
The jihadists have killed at least 46 people, including 32 Syrian army soldiers and six civilians, in areas controlled by the Syrian government in eight days, according to the Observatory.
On Tuesday, two pro-government NDF fighters were killed after being struck by an IED planted by ISIS in the central Hama province.
The NDF is a pro-regime militia that has fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s army since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war over a decade ago.
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