Twelve employees of an oil field under the control of the regime in eastern Syria were killed on Friday December 30 in an attack attributed to the Islamic State (IS) group, the latest attack by the jihadist organization in this country.
The attack, led bycellsof the EI according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), targeted in the morning buses carrying workers from the Al-Taym field west of Deir Ezzor, a desert region where the jihadists entrenched themselves after being driven from all their strongholds in Syria in 2019.
“Hit by a Rocket”
“Devices exploded as buses passed, which were then fired upon by jihadists“, specified the director of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahmane. Twelve Syrian workers perished. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency reported that ten workers had been killed and at least two injured.in a terrorist attack targeting three buses carrying employeesof the oil field.
According to Syrian Oil Minister Bassam Tohmé, one of the buses “was hit by a rocket“. In December 2021, IS launched a similar attack killing ten workers at the al-Kharata oil field, southeast of Deir Ezzor. A large number of jihadists have taken refuge in the badia (desert), which stretches from the central Syrian province of Homs to the eastern border with Iraq, passing through the province of Deir Ezzor.
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Since early December, IS has stepped up attacks in the badia, mainly targeting regime forces and pro-Iranian groups allied with them and killing 37 fighters, according to the OSDH. Two jihadists and a civilian also died there. Syria is fragmented by the war that started in 2011. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has taken over most of the territory, but the Syrian Kurdish forces, spearheading the fight against IS, control vast areas of the north and north- east of the country.
In their fight against ISIS, the Kurds are aided by an international anti-jihadist coalition led by the United States which deploys soldiers in northern Syria. On Thursday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, dominated by Kurdish fighters) announced that they had launched “with the participation of the international coalition an operationin several regions including those of Al-Hol and Al-Hassaké, aiming todrive out ISIS terrorist cells (…) from areas targeted by recent terrorist attacks“.
“Avenge” the Kurdish comrades
The FDS then reported the arrest of “52 jihadists and collaborators who were hiding in residential areas“, According to a press release. On Monday, IS claimed responsibility for an attack on the SDF headquarters in Raqqa, in which six members were killed. The jihadist group claimed to want “revengehis comrades detained by Kurdish forces.
Despite its defeat and the blows inflicted by the Kurds and the coalition, IS still manages to launch attacks. Several foreign powers are involved in the war in Syria, where nearly half a million people have been killed since 2011. An ally of the Assad regime, which it helps militarily, Russia met on Wednesday with the Syrian and Turkish Ministers of Defense after a freeze between the two countries since 2011.
Moscow plays a key role
According to analysts, Moscow plays a key role in the rapprochement between Damascus and Ankara, united by a “opponentcommon represented by Kurdish fighters. A neighbor of Syria, Turkey has been since 2011 the most important political and military support for the Syrian opposition. It also deploys troops in northern Syria alongside Syrian rebels who are loyal to it.
On Friday, hundreds of Syrians demonstrated in towns controlled by pro-Ankara rebels in Al-Bab (north) and Idleb (north-west), to denounce the Syrian-Turkish meeting and affirm their rejection of any “reconciliationwith the regime. On the same day, the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of the SDF, also criticized the meeting, calling on Syrians to “deal with this alliance“.