At least six soldiers and members of a pro-government paramilitary group were killed Friday in an attack by the Islamic State jihadist group in northwestern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Four Uzbek jihadists were also killed, according to the same non-governmental organization based in Britain and based on a vast network of sources in the war-torn country.
The ISIS attack on Syrian regime forces took place in Hadoutin, on the outskirts of the city of Maaret al-Numan, in the southern part of Idlib province.
Last week, seven fighters of the Syrian regime were killed in an attack by IS jihadists in the province of Deir Ezzor (east).
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Since the fall of his self-proclaimed “caliphate” in March 2019, which stretched across parts of Syria and Iraq, IS members have dispersed, gone into hiding and resumed sporadic but deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq.
The so-called dormant nuclei of the Islamic State have intensified their attacks on forces of the Bashar al-Assad regime in recent months in Badiya, the vast Syrian desert that stretches from the central part of the country to the border with Iraq to the east.
In February, 26 regime fighters were killed in an ambush in Deir Ezzor.
About half of Idlib province and areas of neighboring provinces are still out of Damascus’ control.
The extremely complicated war in Syria, which erupted in 2011 in the wake of the crackdown on democratization protests, has since cost the lives of some half a million people and forced several million others to flee their homes, turning them into internally displaced persons or refugees.
