BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Daesh attacks on the Syrian army and allied fighters in central Syria have killed 35 soldiers in recent days, a war monitor says.
Although Daesh lost its last territorial enclave in Syria at Baghouz near the Iraqi border last month to U.S.-backed forces, it still has terrorists holding out in the remote central desert.
The monitor, the Britain-based so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the attacks constituted Daesh’s biggest military operation since losing Baghouz and involved assaults in several parts of central Syria.
The most intense attack was in the al-Koum area north of the ancient desert city of Palmyra, the Observatory said, where Daesh terrorists killed 15 Syrian army and allied soldiers.
Daesh said in a message on its Amaq news outlet that it had killed 20 Syrian soldiers and injured others in the al-Sukhna region between Palmyra and Dayr al-Zawr in an ambush and clashes.
Daesh, which once held large swaths of land in Syria and Iraq, has now been completely defeated in both Arab countries and has lost almost all of its occupied territories.
The terror group holds a tiny pocket of territory in the vast Syrian Desert, known as Badia, near the Iraq border. The terrorists use unpopulated areas of Badia as their hideouts to carry out hit-and-run attacks on Syrian troops.