Clashes in the last 48 hours in Syria’s Homs province resulted in the death of 31 ISIS members due to air and ground strikes, while 20 regime soldiers and loyalists were also killed, a British war monitor said on Saturday, July 04.
The death toll is expected to rise because of the serious injuries of some casualties.
Syrian regime forces backed by Russian air strikes have been battling remnants of ISIS still fighting for a now vanquished caliphate in the central desert province of Homs since late on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The fighting started in the night of Thursday to Friday with a jihadist assault on regime positions” near the town of Al-Sukhna, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
ISIS militants have retained a roving presence in Syria’s vast Badia desert, despite losing their last shred of territory last year.
They regularly carry out attacks there.
ISIS declared a cross-border “caliphate” in large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, but several military campaigns against it chipped away at that proto-state and eventually led to its territorial demise.
Syria’s war has killed more than 380,000 people since it started in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests, before evolving into a complex conflict involving world powers and militants. (Source: The Straits Times)