The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said that an attack on Thursday by Islamic State group militants in Syria’s east killed five of its members.
IS jihadists, once in control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria, were territorially defeated in Syria in 2019 in a battle spearheaded by the SDF with support from an international coalition.
But they have maintained cells that have launched attacks mostly on Kurdish-controlled areas.
The SDF is the de facto army of the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria.
It said in a statement five of its fighters were killed and another wounded when “an IS-affiliated terrorist network” targeted forces east of Deir Ezzor.
The SDF said its fighters thwarted a larger attack that the jihadists had attempted to carry out, adding that its forces were conducting operations to “pursue the terrorist elements and eliminate them in the area”.
More than six years after the group’s defeat in the country, Kurdish-run camps and prisons in Syria’s semi-autonomous northeast hold tens of thousands of people, many with alleged or perceived links to the Islamic State group.
On Friday, the US military said it killed a senior IS operative in a raid in Syria. A previous US raid in July killed an IS leader.
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© Agence France-Presse
