Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for two bomb attacks on the new Syrian government, which would be the first move against the new Syrian government since it took power in December, according to a war monitoring group and international media reports on Friday.
The bombs allegedly killed and wounded multiple government soldiers and members of a government-allied militia, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
ISIS said it had planted a bomb on a "vehicle of the apostate regime" in the desert of the southern province of Sweida last Tuesday and claimed to have killed a member of the US-backed Free Syrian Army in a second bomb attack this week.
While the Syrian government said it conducted two raids in Damascus earlier this week to arrest ISIS operatives, it has not yet acknowledged any attack by the terror group.
Islamic State's hold on Syria
While ISIS’s hold on Syria was significantly reduced in 2019 after large-scale efforts by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, small cells have continued to carry out attacks.
Kurdish authorities struck a deal with the Syrian government earlier this week to begin clearing camps of ISIS families in eastern Syria, The Jerusalem Post's Seth Frantzman reported.
“THE KURDISH authorities and the Syrian interim government have reached an agreement to empty the notorious al-Hol camp from Syrians and return them to their homes, a Kurdish official said on Monday,” according to a report from Kurdish media Rudaw on Monday.
Syria warms ties with the United States as ISIS ups threat level against Western world
While Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was once a member of a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, he has since distanced himself from the group in order to seek alliances among Western nations.
While Sharaa has warmed ties with the Trump administration, ISIS has planned several attacks against the US. An ISIS-affiliated attack claimed the lives of 14 people in New Orleans in January and only two weeks ago a national guardsman was arrested for allegedly planning an attack in the name of the group.
An anonymous senior US defense official told Reuters that following the New Orleans attack, there had been growing concern about the Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria - worries which were heightened when the Assad regime fell.
A UN team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the UN Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.
European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,” it said.
“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.
REUTERS contributed to this report.