U.S. airstrikes hit several Islamic State camps in the Syrian desert on Monday, killing up to 35 of the group’s operatives, the United States Central Command said in a statement on Wednesday.
The strikes targeted multiple senior leaders in the early evening, the statement said, and there were no known civilian casualties. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the identities of the officials targeted.
The United States has dispatched warships and air defense systems to the region, where Israel is at war with Hezbollah and Hamas, backed by Iran, and Iran and Israel have exchanged blows directly. Syria, allied with Iran and Hezbollah, has also been entangled in the conflict, adding to international unease about the already unstable region.
The Pentagon warned in July that attacks in Syria and Iraq that were claimed by the Islamic State, or ISIS, were on track to double the number last year, indicating a resurgence of the terrorist group. ISIS affiliate groups have also become increasingly lethal in other parts of the world, such as Africa’s Sahel region, exploiting political instability and weak central governments.
ISIS claimed responsibility for 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of this year, according to a report by the military’s Central Command. In all of last year, ISIS claimed 121 attacks in Iraq and Syria.
In 2014, the group seized vast stretches of territory in Syria and Iraq, establishing a brutal regime there. Over the next five years, an array of ISIS adversaries, including the United States, combined to take back the region, but thousands of the group’s fighters survived, melting into the general population.
“The Islamic State threat in Syria has not gone away; it was always there. Since 2019, the group has been biding its time waiting to resurge,” said Devorah Margolin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The group, she said, has carried out more attacks than it has claimed openly, has repeatedly tried to free its members from prisons and has continued a shadow governance in parts of northeastern Syria.
The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria to help contain and defeat what remains of ISIS. Despite the group’s increased attacks this year, the U.S.-led military coalition plans to end its mission and leave Iraq over the next two years, U.S. and Iraqi officials announced in a joint statement in September. The statement said the mission in Syria could continue longer, contingent on conditions within the war-torn country.
Ms. Margolin warned that the ISIS would grow when American troops withdraw.
“Without a base in Iraq to operate from, it will be nearly impossible to offer the much-needed air support to fight I.S. in Syria, or to maintain our troop presence there,” she said. “Without a concrete plan in place on how to continue to operate in Syria, the U.S. will be faced with leaving Syria, creating an opportunity for the Islamic State to fully resurge.”
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