File image.
On February 4, two fighters of the pro-government National Defense Forces were killed near an oil field in Syria’s central region, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The two fighters were targeted with an improvised explosive device (IED) near al-Hail, one of several small oil fields that are located in the eastern countryside of Homs. The fighters were likely guards of the field.
The London-based monitoring group speculated that ISIS was behind the deadly IED attack. The terrorist group’s cells in central Syria have been waging an insurgency against government forces and their allies for a few years. However, the group rarely claims responsibility for attacks in the region.
This was not the first attack to take place near one of the central region’s oil fields. In December, ISIS was unofficially blamed for a missile strike that targeted vehicles shuttling workers from and to the al-Taim oil field in the southwestern Deir Ezzor countryside. Ten workers were killed and two others were wounded in the attack.
Syrian government forces and their allies conduct operations against ISIS cells in the central region on a regular basis. The terrorist group’s insurgency has been slowing down. Yet, it is still far from being over.
The group may have carried out the recent attacks near al-Taim and al-Hail to disrupt Syria’s oil production, or even to distract government forces in the central region.
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