[Rudaw] At least five members of a pro-Syrian regime militia were killed in an Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(ISIS) attack in central Homs province, a conflict monitor reported on Saturday.
"Armed men from Islamic State cells launched a surprise attack targeting a group of button men loyal to the regime and members of the Russian-backed al-Quds Brigade ... which resulted in five members dead," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor.
ISIS fighters launched the assault while pro-regime forces were carrying out a combing operation in the eastern countryside of Homs, the monitor said.
This is the latest in a string of ISIS attacks in Syria, which have been on the rise recently, especially in the vast expanses of its eastern desert where the group carries out surprise attacks amid a security vacuum.
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 Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces.