ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) foiled an attack by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province on Monday, killing two militants in the process, a war monitor reported.
“While they were trying to carry out an operation against an SDF site, two members of ISIS were killed east of Deir ez-Zor,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
ISIS rose to power and seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land amid a brazen offensive in 2014, declaring a so-called “caliphate”.
Though ISIS no longer controls any territory, it continues to pose a security risk by carrying out kidnappings, hit-and-run attacks, and bombings and the SDF conducts frequent operations against the group.
The Kurdish-led and US-backed SDF, who control northeast Syria (Rojava), fought the lion’s share of the battle against ISIS and arrested thousands of the terror group’s fighters along with their wives and children when they crushed ISIS territorially and took the group’s last stronghold in Syria in 2019.
On Sunday, separate ISIS attacks in Deir ez-Zor province killed at least five SDF members, hours after another Kurdish-led fighter was killed by ISIS gunmen in the province.
In late March, the SDF warned that ISIS still poses a threat to the world and the region as its defeat “requires dismantling its ideological breeding ground.”
“ISIS is still trying to recruit new terrorist elements, attempting to radicalize them into its ranks,” said the SDF, calling on the international community to “collaborate effectively” with its forces.
On Thursday, the SDF announced the capture of two ISIS members in Deir ez-Zor accused of planning acts of terror in northeast Syria (Rojava).
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