Islamic State responsible for nearly 4,100 deaths in Syria since fall of caliphate in 2019, report says – Irish Times

this Islamic State Terrorist groups have killed nearly 4,100 civilians and fighters in Syria since the demise of the cross-border militant caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2019, a new report shows.

this Report The report by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that since the fall of the Syrian government, ISIS fugitives have carried out 2,500 operations in Syrian government-controlled areas and autonomous regions controlled by the US-backed Kurdish militia Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The report, released on the 10th anniversary of the Islamic State’s declaration of a caliphate in June 2014, stretching from Raqqa in central Syria to Mosul in Iraq, said the ongoing operations showed the movement’s territorial defeats in 2019 were only “symbolic”.

Since then, SOHR has documented 914 attacks that have killed 2,744 people, including 215 civilians, in the Syrian government-controlled eastern desert region, a 4,000 square kilometer area where the Syrian army and allied militias are battling the Islamic State.

In the 25 percent of northeastern Syria controlled by the Kurdish SDF and U.S. forces, Islamic State cells conducted 1,680 operations, killing 1,341 people, 412 of whom were civilians, SOHR reported.

At its peak in 2014, the Islamic State ruled an area half the size of Britain, attracted tens of thousands of volunteers from around the world, committed atrocities against soldiers and civilians, destroyed ancient and medieval monuments and dozens of religious sites. It massacred, raped and enslaved thousands of women from Iraq’s non-Muslim minority Yazidi community, from which the community has still not recovered.

Syria is not the only country facing the threat of the Islamic State. Although the movement’s four leaders have been eliminated, its sleeper cells continue to carry out deadly attacks in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa and Russia. In March, for example, the group launched a massive attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed 140 people and injured 300.

JB Vowell, commander of the U.S. task force, told the Associated Press that the Islamic State “remains a threat to international security.” “We will continue to work hard to resolute and destroy any remnants of groups that share their ideology,” he said.

In 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi formed the al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and launched a military campaign in Syria, which was then mired in civil war and proxy conflicts. After entering Iraq and capturing Mosul, Baghdadi appeared at the city’s Grand Mosque. He declared himself caliph and called on Muslims to flock to the group he called the Islamic State.

Only then did the United States decide to form an 80-member coalition to fight the violent expansionist entity rejected by the ummah, the global Muslim community. In October 2019, Baghdadi committed suicide during a US commando raid in Idlib province in northern Syria, which is controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, another branch of al-Qaeda.