Illustrative image.
On February 5, ISIS cells attacked a position of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the National Defense Forces (NDF) in the outskirts of the ancient city of Palmyra in the eastern countryside of Homs, taking advantage of bad weather and heavy fog.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that a soldier was killed as a result of the attack. The London-based monitoring group didn’t clarify if any other service members or pro-government fighters were wounded.
ISIS is becoming more active in the eastern Homs countryside. Just a day earlier, two NDF fighters were killed near al-Hail oil field in a roadside bomb attack that was attributed to the terrorist group’s cells.
The group has been waging an insurgency against pro-government forces in central Syria for a few years now. According to the SOHR, 25 personnel from the SAA, the NDF and other pro-government formations have been killed in 17 terrorist attacks in the region since the start of the year.
Bad weather conditions have prevented the Russian and Syrian air forces from providing close support to pro-government forces on several occasions for most of this winter. This may explain a recent uptake in ISIS operations.
While ISIS cells are not currently posing any real threat to key urban centers and strategic roads in the central region, more efforts to counter the terrorist group are still needed.
