The operations of the Islamic State organization have reached the center of the city of Qamishli, where the Syrian regime’s forces are stationed for the first time in years, as the group claimed the killing of one element and the injury of another in a security operation carried out inside the city’s security square.
The organization announced via its official identifier on Telegram, Saturday, February 17, that it targeted a military post for the regime forces in the city of Qamishli with pistol shots, which led to the death of one element and injuries to another.
This operation is considered the first of its kind since 2019 when the Islamic State organization adopted a car bomb explosion in the center of Qamishli city, resulting in the deaths and injuries of civilians.
The media office in al-Hasakah governorate posted a picture on Facebook from the funeral procession of the element killed in the Islamic State’s attack in Qamishli, without referring to the party responsible for his death.
The office said that the picture is from the funeral of Lieutenant Sharaf Bassam al-Azou from the public body of Qamishli National Hospital, pointing out that he was killed “while performing his national duty in the city of Qamishli.”
Since the beginning of this year, the operations of the Islamic State organization have reached new areas in Syria that had been absent for years, as it targeted a few days ago an employee in the Autonomous Administration’s areas in al-Mufti neighborhood in the city of al-Hasakah.
These operations also extended to the city of al-Sukhnah east of Homs, which has long been the focus of the organization’s activity in its eastern part.
The Syrian regime controls small neighborhoods in the centers of the cities of al-Hasakah and Qamishli and refers to these areas as a “security square” as they include security branches and government buildings, while the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control vast areas surrounding these “squares.”
Operations of the Islamic State recorded the highest pace in more than a year, according to what the organization reported successively through its official identifier on Telegram (a closed newsroom that includes journalists), and these operations were distributed in the northern part of Syria and others in the Badia region in the eastern countryside of Homs.
The organization announced 32 operations in the first week of the current year, followed by 34 operations in the following week, in addition to 11 operations announced on Friday, February 15.
The operations in northeast Syria were not different from those carried out over the previous years, but their intensity was different and included areas in provinces that had not registered attacks for about a year, such as Raqqa and al-Hasakah.