The attack, using an explosive device, targeted new government forces in Sweida province.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for its first attack in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last December.
According to initial reports from SITE Intelligence Group and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack took place Wednesday in the southern province of Sweida, targeting a vehicle carrying members of the new government forces.
The patrol was hit by a remote-controlled explosive device, identified as a landmine. The blast killed one person and wounded three others, all members of the Syrian army’s 70th Division.
In a statement issued later through its Amaq news agency, ISIS claimed the attack killed and wounded “seven members of the Syrian regime,” though it did not clarify how many were killed versus injured.
Despite the discrepancy in casualty figures, the Observatory warned that ISIS’s claim marks a “significant escalation” in its operations inside Syria, as the group had not previously taken direct responsibility for armed actions against Damascus’s new military.
The Islamic State once maintained a powerful presence across Syria and Iraq, until a U.S.- and Kurdish-led offensive in 2019 dealt it a decisive defeat, pushing it into marginal desert zones.
Since then, most of ISIS’s attacks have focused on Kurdish-led forces, rarely targeting Damascus. But in recent months, the group’s presence has begun to resurface, forcing new authorities to ramp up security operations and prompting international pressure to contain the terrorists’ resurgence.
During a recent meeting in Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump urged Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to place special emphasis on preventing ISIS’s strengthening. In return, Trump agreed to lift sanctions on the country as part of a broader deal.
The United States expressed its “support for the Syrian people, after so many years of conflict and violence,” and reaffirmed its commitment to “the lasting defeat of ISIS, (…) foreign terrorist fighters, relations with Israel, and the detention camps and centers in the northeast,” said U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, following a meeting with al-Sharaa soon after the announcement.
In a show of support for these efforts, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) successfully thwarted two ISIS attacks in eastern Deir Ezzor earlier in May. According to an SDF statement, one attack targeted the Diban checkpoint, 13 kilometers north of Al Bahra, while the other aimed at a military vehicle in Jadida Adikat. No casualties were reported in either case.
Additionally, this week Damascus confirmed the arrest of members of a terrorist cell near the capital as they were preparing an attack.
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