A Syrian serviceman was killed in an attack on an army base in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, state media reported early on Tuesday.
“One member of the Syrian Arab Army was martyred as a result of unknown assailants targeting an army headquarters in the vicinity of the city of Al Mayadin, east of Deir Ezzor,” Sana news agency reported.
It is unclear who carried out the attack, but it came hours after four police officers were killed in an ISIS attack at a checkpoint in Raqqa on Monday.
The Interior Ministry said one attacker was “neutralised”. Government personnel were “combing the area” to find other members of a suspected terrorist cell.
ISIS declared war on Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara's government on Sunday, describing it as illegitimate because of its links with Turkey and the US. The group claimed responsibility for two weekend attacks on army personnel in the north and east of the country
Abu Hudhayfah 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 that of the former president Bashar Al Assad.
On Monday, Syrian authorities closed Al Hol camp, the prison that once housed thousands of families with suspected ties to ISIS, after its last inmates moved out.
The detention centre, in a desert region of Hasakah province, was once home to about 24,000 people, including children born in the camp who do not know life outside. It also housed more than 6,000 foreigners of about 40 nationalities who were denied repatriation to their home countries.
Syria joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in November. Mr Al Shara turned against ISIS in 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.
