“Four members of National Defense Forces [NDF] were killed in an ambush carried out by ISIS cells in al-Masrab desert in western Deir ez-Zor countryside,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
It is the second ISIS operation against regime and pro-regime forces in hours, after another attack killed four Syrian army soldiers in Raqqa province.
The NDF is a pro-government militia that has fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war over a decade ago. It is composed of local volunteers across numerous provinces.
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. The scale of attacks have sparked fears of a possible ISIS resurgence.
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.
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