IS ambush kills 26 pro-regime fighters in Syria

The IS group Monday killed 26 pro-regime fighters in eastern Syria, as alarm grew following a spate of murders including beheadings in a camp housing families of the jihadists, reports AFP.

Almost 10 years into Syria’s civil war, the jihadists have lost the last scrap of their so-called “caliphate” but continue to use Syria’s vast desert as a springboard for attacks.

After the battles against them, thousands of alleged jihadists and family members live in jails or overcrowded camps in the country’s Kurdish-run northeast.

Early Monday, an IS ambush in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor killed 26 pro-regime fighters, including seven Syrian troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Eleven jihadists were also killed, it said.

It was the latest in a long string of attacks on pro-regime forces.

Last week IS killed 19 in central Syria, and in December nearly 40 Syrian troops died when IS ambushed a bus carrying soldiers travelling home for the holidays.

The desert in Deir Ezzor province provides a “safe haven” for jihadists planning attacks on regime forces and other rivals, the UN has said.

Meanwhile, a Kurdish official said 14 killings, including three beheadings, had rocked the largest displacement camp housing alleged IS relatives since the start of the year.

IS overran large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a cross-border “caliphate” there in 2014, before several offensives in both countries led to its territorial defeat.

The Kurdish-led fight that expelled IS from its last holdout in March 2019 displaced tens of thousands of people, many of whom ended up in camps in the Kurdish-held northeast.