The Russian-backed Syrian regime forces launched a military campaign against the Islamic State militants in the Badia desert amid hike in attacks on regime army and allied forces that left more than 20 fighters dead in one week.
Pro-regime media outlets said the Russian and Syrian warplanes had pounded Daesh bastions in a desert region lying between eastern Deir Ezzor and central Homs provinces.
At least nine pro-Bashar al-Assad fighters were killed on Saturday and Sunday in Daesh attacks in the Badia desert in central Homs province, local activists told Zaman al-Wasl.
The group was defeated in Syria in March 2019, but sleeper cells continue to launch attacks in the vast Badia desert spanning from central Syria eastwards to the border with Iraq.
Daesh has resorted to guerrilla tactics since it abandoned its goal of holding territory and creating a self-sufficient caliphate that straddles Iraq and Syria.
Also, in the Syrian desert, Lebanon's Hezbollah militia has repositioned dozens of missiles, following US-led coaltion's airstrikes hit pro-Iran factions based over the week in eastern and central Syria, sources told Zaman al-Wasl Friday.
More than 250 missiles were re-stationed from the desert town of al-Sukhna to al-Qaryatayn region east of Homs city, according to the source.
In eight trucks, Hezbollah transferred medium-range missiles,150 Katyusha rockets, 30 surface-to-air missiles, and shoulder-mounted anti-armor missiles.
Zaman al-Wasl reporter says the transfer came after an unidentified aircraft targeted one of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' warehouses in the Palmyra desert on Thursday.
Last Tuesday, the US-led coalition fighting Daesh in Syria said they had foiled an attack in the Deir Ezzor region in the northeast of the country, a day after the second anniversary of the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
After spotting “several launch sites of indirect fire rockets that posed an imminent threat,” coalition forces “conducted strikes to eliminate the threat,” a coalition official said in a statement.
“Indirect fire attacks pose a serious threat to innocent civilians because of their lack of discrimination” and the coalition “reserves the right to defend itself” added the official.
Asked about who might be behind the attack, the third in less than 48 hours in the region after others targeting the Ain Assad air base on Tuesday in western Iraq and Baghdad international airport on Monday, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said he could not identify them.
“I’m not in a position now to get into specific attribution,” he said. “That said, we continue to see threats against our forces in Iraq and Syria by militia groups that are backed by Iran.”
Some 900 US troops remain deployed in northeastern Syria and at the Al-Tanf base in the south, on the borders of Iraq and Jordan.
The Syrian conflict has claimed 494,438 lives and has displaced 13,2 million people since it erupted in March 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests.
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