At Least 90 Killed in Last Month of Syria-ISIS Fighting

Fighting centered on two separate sites

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is reporting substantial fighting between Syrian forces and ISIS early this month, with at least 90 fighters killed so far. 41 government soldiers are among the slain, along with 49 ISIS.

The fighting is centered on two patches of desert between Orontes and Euphrates Valley. This would mean the desert south of Idlib and Aleppo, which is where a lot of ISIS fighters are believed to have fled when the caliphate originally crumbled.

Throughout those deserts, and in the desert further east, ISIS is there, not really controlling anything, but sometimes able to carry out an attack against a passing convoy, which has happened a few times lately.

The belief is that ISIS is trying to recover from its previous defeats and reassert in at least a part of Syria, though so far this has amounted to a few fierce battles, usually culminating in Russian airstrikes defeating the last ISIS fighters.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.