Syria’s interim leader and two senior cabinet ministers were targeted in five foiled assassination plots last year, highlighting the persistent threat posed by ISIS militants, according to a UN report.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in the report that President Ahmad Al Shara was the primary target of attempted attacks in Aleppo province and the southern province of Deraa.
The plots were attributed to Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah, a group assessed as “being a front for ISIS”, who were providing it with “plausible deniability and improved operational capacity”.
Interior Minister Anas Hasan Khattab and Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani were also targeted, according to the report, which was prepared by the UN Office of Counterterrorism.
The document did not provide specific dates or operational details of the attempts.
Saraya Ansar Al Sunnah was described as comprising between five and 12 decentralised cells focused on targeting Syrian minorities. The group included ISIS members, some former members of Hurras Al Din and other armed factions.
The report estimated that ISIS maintains about 3,000 fighters across the broader Syria-Iraq region, with the majority based in Syria.
The group has established networks across all Syrian governorates, embedding sleeper cells in urban centres including Damascus, the UN said. It has also concealed the scale of its activities by leaving many attacks unclaimed.
Between June and November, the report stated, member states attributed at least 129 attacks to ISIS, primarily using improvised explosive devices, vehicle-borne explosives, assassinations and ambushes.
Most incidents were concentrated in Dayr Al Zawr, and nearly 70 per cent targeted the Syrian Democratic Forces. From late November, the group expanded attacks in Idlib and Aleppo against Syrian military forces.
The report also said the perpetrator of the December 13 attack near Palmyra that killed two US soldiers and one civilian was a “newly recruited Syrian security forces member” with reported links to ISIS, underscoring the group’s continued ability to infiltrate state institutions.
Syria joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in November following a meeting in Washington between Mr Al Shara and President Donald Trump, marking a significant shift in Damascus’s engagement with Western-backed security efforts.
