The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that the operation targeted a house suspected of housing ISIS fighters in Deir ez-Zor’s Duhla village, leading to violent clashes with both sides exchanging fire.
The booby-trapped house was detonated by the ISIS fighters after the altercations escalated, the monitor added. At least five ISIS members were killed and two others were wounded as a result of the operation.
ISIS attacks in Syria, particularly in the vast expanses of its eastern desert where the group is active amid a security vacuum, have been on the rise in recent months, sparking fears of a possible resurgence.
ISIS rose to power and seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land in a brazen offensive in 2014, declaring a so-called “caliphate.” While the group was declared territorially defeated in 2019, it continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions in both Syria and Iraq.
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.
Hundreds of US troops stationed in Syria are part of an international coalition that has fought ISIS alongside the SDF.
The commander of American operations in the Middle East, CENTCOM, General Michael Kurilla told Congress in March that if US troops were to leave, as they are under pressure to do in Iraq, “ISIS would reconstitute the ability to seize territory within two years,” according to the Pentagon’s most recent quarterly report on anti-ISIS operation.
On Friday, a joint operation by the SDF and the US-led coalition resulted in the arrest of an ISIS leader in Deir ez-Zor.