ISIS Attacks Killed Fifteen Pro-government Syrian Fighters

ISIS militants killed at least 15 Syrian pro-government fighters on Friday after they attacked three military positions in the Syrian desert, a war monitor said.

It is the latest attack of its kind by remnants of the extremists.

They “attacked three military sites belonging to regime forces and fighters loyal to them in the eastern Homs countryside, triggering armed clashesand killing 15” pro-government fighters, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

ISIS overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
ISIS remnants are also active in neighboring Iraq.

Last month, ISIS group fighters killed 28 Syrian soldiers and affiliated pro-government forces in two attacks on government-held areas of Syria, the Observatory said.

Many were members of the Quds Brigade, a group comprising Palestinian fighters that has received support from Damascus ally Moscow in recent years, according to the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

In one of those attacks, the extremists fired on a military bus in eastern Homs province, the Observatory said at the time.

Separately, six Syrian soldiers died in an IS attack against a base in eastern Syria, it added.

Syria’s war has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.

It then pulled in foreign powers, militias and extremists.

In late March, ISIS militants “executed” eight Syrian soldiers after an ambush, the monitor said at that time.

The extremists also target people hunting desert truffles, a delicacy which can fetch high prices in the war-battered economy.