ISIS declared war on Sunday on the Syrian government of President Ahmad Al Shara, describing it as illegitimate because of its links with Turkey and the US.
Abu Hudhayfa Al Ansari, an ISIS spokesman, said in a recorded message that Syria has entered a “new chapter” of struggle, calling Mr Al Shara “a new despot” whose fate “will not be better” than former leader Bashar Al Assad.
The former president and his Iranian backers were “quickly replaced” by a regime “subservient” to Washington, the spokesman said. Al Ansari said Mr Al Shara has become “beholden to the devils of Turks and the West”.
The escalation comes at an uneasy time as Syrian authorities retake control over vast desert areas of the country containing pockets of the group's supporters. The area, comprising the governorates of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, as well as most of Hasakah, had been held for almost a decade by the Kurdish-led armed group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.
In November, Syria joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition as Washington all but abandoned the SDF. Mr Al Shara turned against ISIS during the middle stages of his time as an insurgent, which ended when he led his Hayat Tahrir Al Sham group on an 11-day offensive that toppled the Assad regime in December 2024.
Al Ansari described the 11-day operation as a Turkish plot that was “directed” by Washington, installing Mr Al Shara as a “dummy” leader whose government has been waging war on “people of faith”.
“The new Syrian regime, with its secular government and national army are infidels and apostates”, Al Ansari said, as he called on ISIS supporters to “seek to fight them relentlessly”.
Syrian security forces have mounted several major operations against ISIS across the country, killing and arresting dozens of its members. The extremist group has pockets mainly in the central Badia region, and near the border with Iraq to the east.
Since the downfall of the Assad regime, many ISIS members who were operating in the Badia area have been returning to their hometowns near the main cities of Aleppo, Hama and Damascus, regional security officials say.
ISIS claimed responsibility for two weekend attacks on army personnel in the north and east of the country. The group said on its Dabiq social media outlet that it had attacked “an individual of the apostate Syrian regime” in the city of Mayadin in Deir Ezzor province using a pistol, and attacked two other personnel with machineguns in the northern city of Raqqa.
Syria’s Defence Ministry said that a Syrian army soldier and a civilian were killed on Saturday by “unknown assailants”. Several social media accounts and Telegram channels supporting ISIS have in recent hours called for intensified attacks using motorcycles.
The US has mounted several strikes on ISIS positions in Syria in recent months. Some were in retaliation for an attack in Palmyra that killed three Americans in December, carried out by a Syrian officer whom the authorities described as an ISIS member.
The government takeover of central and eastern regions from the SDF has occurred as the US reduced its presence in Syria, abandoning at least two main bases. Washington had relied on the SDF as the main ground component in the war in Syria against ISIS. However, it has supported a government takeover of most of the SDF's fiefdom in Syria, and moved more than 5,000 ISIS prisoners in the area to Iraq.
However, many detainees, some of whom are suspected of having links with ISIS, escaped refugee camps and detention centres in the transfer of control between the SDF and government forces in the last month.
Iraq signalled on Sunday that it is not willing to house the relocated ISIS suspects indefinitely. "Their stay in Iraq is temporary and they will be returned to their countries of origin," Iraqi official Saeed Al Jayashi was quoted as saying by official media. He said the inmates come from more than 67 countries.
