US forces attacked al-Qaeda terrorist targets in Aleppo overnight, according to Maariv. 

The US Army Central Command explained, in a statement, that the purpose of the attack was to target fighters responsible for planning attacks against US citizens, allies and innocent civilians.

The statement continued to say that North-West Syria remained a haven for al-Qaeda leaders, who plan and continue to try and carry out attacks throughout the region. 

At least five U.S.-backed fighters were killed Thursday in clashes with ISIS (Daesh) militants in eastern Deir Ezzor province, activists told Zaman al-Wasl, like reported by zamanalwsl.net.

The assailants opened fire on the Syrian Democratic Forces in the town of al-Hajin, according to activist Mohamed al-Khalaf.

The attack by the Islamic State’s sleeper cell followed a campaign by the Kurdish-led forces to track former Daesh militants in eastern Syria.

‘Kurdistan 24’ news site reported on Wednesday that the SDF had arrested five Daesh members in Raqqa and Manbij cities.

Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF press office in northeast Syria, wrote on Twitter that counterterrorism units had detained the five Islamic State members in “two separate successful raids in Raqqa and Manbij countryside.”

A roadmap published by the US-led coalition for the defeat of the Islamic State following a meeting of senior coalition officials in Paris on Tuesday also underlined the threat of active sleeper cells.

Despite the SDF and the US-led coalition announcing the defeat of the terror group’s self-proclaimed caliphate on March 23, Islamic State sleeper cell attacks continue in Arab-majority areas that were liberated from the militants.

The US-led coalition confirmed that although a territorial defeat had been achieved, “the job to ensure a lasting defeat of [ISIS] is still to be done.”

The leadership in the Kurdistan Region has also warned of the Islamic State’s continued threat in both Syria and Iraq.

The Islamic State is capable of make a sudden comeback in the Middle East that could be “faster and even more devastating” than 2014, when the group quickly conquered territory the size of Britain, according to a new report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), like reported by intelnews.org.

The Washington-based think-tank’s report is based on the most recent data about the presence in the Middle East of the militant Islamist group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The 76-page report is titled ISIS’s Second Comeback: Assessing the Next ISIS Insurgency, and is written by ISW’s researchers Jennifer Cafarella, Brandon Wallace and Jason Zhou.

The authors claim that the Islamic State moved its forces undercover during the multinational military campaign that eventually sacked its self-proclaimed caliphate. They go on to explain that by “deliberately withdrawing and relocating may of its fighters and their families”, the group managed to preserve a large part of its fighting forces, which are “now dispersed across [Iraq and Syria] and are waging a capable insurgency”.

The latter is funded through ISIS’ global finance network and armed with weapons and other war materiel that the group managed to hide in tunnel systems and other hidden facilities. Islamic State insurgents have thus been engaged in a broad and largely successful campaign to assassinate village and town elders across Iraq, and have even reestablished a sharia-based taxation system in some of Iraq’s predominantly Sunni areas. The group also retains a significant presence in Syria, where it continues to battle the Syrian regime, US-supported Kurdish forces, and other Sunni militant groups, including al-Qaeda, according to the report.

Through its widening insurgency, the Islamic State has managed to subvert Iraqi and Syrian government efforts to reintroduce a semblance of stability and safety in areas previously conquered by the militant group. In fact, not only are government forces finding it “increasingly difficult to establish durable and legitimate security and political structures” in those areas, but they should be worried about the possibility of ISIS actually reconquering territory in both countries, the report warns.

The report’s authors place much of the blame for ISIS’ resurgence at Washington’s door, describing America’s hasty military withdrawal from Iraq and Syria as “a critical mistake”. In its recommendations section, the report calls on the United States to develop and implement a long-term counter-terrorism strategy against ISIS, which will combine military and community-building measures. “Another limited [military] intervention will not be sufficient” to eliminate the threat, the report’s authors claim.

Saudi special forces have captured the leader of the Yemeni branch of the Islamic State militant group, Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Tuesday.

SPA said Abu Osama al-Muhajer, as well as other members of the organization, were captured on June 3.

Weapons, ammunition and telecommunication devices were also seized during the operation.

At least five Daesh militants were killed Monday in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition aircraft and an operation by a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi force in the western province of Anbar, reported Xinhua News Agency, quoting the Iraqi military.

Acting on intelligence reports, the U.S.-led coalition aircraft conducted an airstrike on Daesh positions in Akashat area near the town of al-Qaim, some 400 km northwest of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, Yahia Rasoul, spokesman for the media office of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.

The airstrike resulted in the killing of five extremist Daesh militants, the JOC said in a brief statement.

Also in the province, a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi force conducted an operation against Daesh hideouts in al-Qaim desert on the border with Syria, a statement by Hashd Shaabi said.

The operation resulted in the killing of many Daesh militants and the destruction of a four-wheel drive vehicle, the statement said, without giving further details.

Daesh remnants are still active in the vast Anbar desert which stretches to the border with neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as many civilians have been kidnapped or killed by the extremist group recently.

The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist Daesh militants across the country late in 2017.

Daesh remnants, however, have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas as safe havens, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

Earlier this month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based watchdog group, reported that Israeli fighter jets struck Hezbollah positions on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. There was no Israeli comment on the claim, like reported by toi.com.

The report said one of the targets was a post on Tel al-Harra, a mountain that is considered a strategic point that overlooks the Golan Heights, while the other was in Quneitra, near the UN-monitored border crossing with Israel, where Arab media reports a Syrian air-defense position and a Hezbollah intelligence center are located.

The Iran-backed Lebanese terror group had been trying to set up a front on the Syrian Golan for years, but had previously been unable to gain a sufficient foothold in the area. However, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s conquest of the border area last summer provided the regime-allied organization with an opportunity to once again attempt to establish the necessary infrastructure with which it could threaten Israel near the border.

The alleged Israeli strikes near the border were a rare occurrence. In the past Israel has targeted villages and towns along the Golan Heights frontier after identifying Iranian and Hezbollah attempts to establish cells and infrastructure in the area.

But the incident also highlighted a reality once unthinkable in Syria: With Hezbollah one of the chief powers setting the tone in the country after years of civil war, Syrian army forces are now in some cases taking their orders from the organization — and helping it spy on Israel.

Hezbollah’s presence in Syrian territory opposite the Israeli border is a natural continuation of the group’s expanding activity in the Middle East (in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, among others), and the civil war that has been raging in Syria for approximately eight years.

Its increased clout is particularly noticeable in the region of southern Syria that the Syrians call Hauran. In the same area that gave rise to the protests against Assad in March 2011 in the city of Daraa, a situation has now formed in which Syrian soldiers receive “recommendations” — which are in effect orders — from Hezbollah commanders.

A segment of the Syrian army that controls the southern part of the country works closely with many consultants from Hezbollah, which use it for purposes such as intelligence-gathering, and is also helping the Lebanon-based group prepare for an expected future war with Israel (as well as assisting it in dealing with local opposition).

To put it in the simplest terms, these Syrian troops are now serving Hezbollah’s Shiite army in Lebanon. Bashar’s deceased father, Hafez Assad, would be rolling in his grave: During his time the elder Assad waged war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and killed hundreds of its members.

How did the tables so turn? The civil war was, without a doubt, the key event, with the Syrian army now dependent on assistance from Hezbollah and Iran in order to survive.

Earlier in the war, when Assad’s regime appeared to be on its last legs, Hezbollah sent numerous advisers to the region whose stated purpose was simply to aid the fighting against the opposition groups in Hauran. A great deal has happened since then, and about a year ago — with Assad buoyed also by Iranian and particularly Russian forces — it became clear that the battle for Syria had been decided: the regime had won. But Hezbollah didn’t stop at that point — it began to establish its forces permanently throughout Syria, particularly in its southern sector.

This process took place with quite a bit of hesitation by Hezbollah’s leaders, especially regarding the financial implications of leaving troops on Syrian soil. In the end, the strategic thinking that troops should be positioned against Israel on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights won out.

This had to be done clandestinely though: Following the understandings that Israel reached with Russia, Iranian and Hezbollah presence is prohibited at a distance of approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Syrian border with Israel.

And thus a “Southern Headquarters” operated by Hezbollah is currently operating in secret in the territory known as Hauran. It is a military organization in every sense, which operates with several dozen Lebanese and hundreds of Syrians, most of them from Hauran: Thanks to financial difficulties brought on by the war, Hezbollah has had little trouble recruiting quite a few locals to serve its purposes.

The force, led by Lebanese commander Munir Ali Naim Shaiti (better known by the alias Hajj Hashem), is now focusing less and less upon threats at home and much more on the old threat: Israel.

The Southern Headquarters is armed with weapons that include antitank missiles and particularly powerful short-range rockets with a minimum weight of approximately 250 kilograms and effectiveness at a range of approximately four kilometers. Their original purpose was to strike opposition targets, but they are now being repurposed with the aim of destroying Israeli villages on the Golan Heights or the upper Galilee.

The purpose of the Southern Headquarters is to collect high-quality intelligence about the Israeli side of the border. The headquarters works under the radar of international forces and does its best to hide its tracks. Seeking to avoid Israeli attacks on its forces, Hezbollah has done its best to camouflage its activity. Its people do not act openly, and it has recruited troops from Syria Army’s 1st Corps to assist its operations.

It is believed the group has set up approximately 20 lookout positions on the Syrian Golan Heights facing Israeli territory. Each such outpost is manned by Syrian soldiers, often accompanied by Hezbollah members but sometimes on their own. These soldiers gather intelligence according to the orders of Hezbollah: training exercises on the Israeli side, the day-to-day security routine, activity in villages and more. The information is sent to several Hezbollah operations rooms in the Syrian Golan Heights, and from there it is relayed to headquarters in Lebanon and/or to the Iranians.

In addition, the Southern Headquarters makes use of technology to attempt to listen in on the Israeli side, via communications networks or other means.

Simultaneously Hezbollah continues to build its offensive capabilities in the Golan Heights. These efforts are led by veteran terrorist Ali Musa Daqduq, also known as Abu Hussein Sajed, a Lebanese man who is wanted in the United States for attacks against American forces in Iraq, including planning an attack in Karbala in 2007 that resulted in the deaths of five US soldiers.

According to the US Treasury Department, Daqduq has served “as commander of a Hezbollah special forces unit and chief of a protective detail for Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.” Daqduq was arrested in 2007 and imprisoned in Iraq, but was released five years later and sent to Lebanon.

Daqduq leads an operational unit in every sense, whose purpose is to act mainly in situations of large-scale escalation and carry out high-quality terror attacks. In March, the IDF said it had exposed a nascent Hezbollah terror cell led by Daqduq and established in a border village on the Syrian Golan Heights.

While the commanding officers of this unit are Lebanese, most of its troops — which number approximately two hundred — are Syrian, who were recruited from, among other places, Druze communities such as Khadar and Arnah on the Syrian Golan Heights.

The concern now is that the intelligence and operational arms will join forces: If Hezbollah commanders decide to use Daqduq’s troops to carry out an attack on Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights, they will likely do so with intelligence provided by Hajj Hashem’s Southern Headquarters.

A total of three Islamic State (IS) militants were killed and four others captured by Iraqi security forces in an operation in Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, a security official said.

Diyala’s provincial police and intelligence service have been conducting a week-long operation to hunt down recruitment cells for IS suicide bombers in the province through raiding their hideouts, Sadiq al-Husseini, head of the security committee of the provincial council, told Xinhua.

The operation, which was based on accurate intelligence, resulted in the killing of three would-be suicide bombers affiliated with IS group and the capturing of four others who used to provide logistic support for the suicide bombers, al-Husseini said without giving further details.

Despite repeated military operations in the Diyala province, remnants of IS militants are still hiding in some rugged areas near the border with Iran, and in the sprawling areas extending from the western part of the province to the Himreen mountain range in north of the provincial capital Baquba.

The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017.

IS remnants, however, have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas as safe havens, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

One Syrian resident was killed and 21 injured during a terrorist attack on the Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi Press Agency. 

Colonel Turki Almalki, the official spokesman for the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen, earlier put the number injured at seven.

“At 21.10, Sunday, the Iranian-aligned Houthi militias launched an attack on the Abha International Airport via which thousands of civilians, including Saudis and residents of various nationalities, are transiting on a daily basis,” Almalki said in a comments published by the Saudi Press Agency.

The Saudi Press Agency said of the 21 injured, four were Indians, two Egyptians, 13 Saudi and two Bangladeshis.

Several countries, including Bahrain, Djibouti, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates condemned the attack.

In a statement, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MoFAIC) condemned the terrorist attack which, it said, flies in the face of all international laws and conventions.

“The UAE strongly condemns this terrorist act and labels it as a new evidence of the Iranian-backed Houthi militias’ hostile and terrorist tendencies to undermine security and stability in the region,” the statement issued by UAE news agency WAM said.

“The UAE re-iterates its solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against any threat to its security and stability and supports all measures taken by the Saudi government to maintain the security of its citizens and residents,” the statement continued.

“The security of the UAE and of the Kingdom is indivisible,” it noted, adding, “any threat or danger to Saudi Arabia’s security is considered a threat to UAE’s security and stability.”

The U.S.-led coalition backed by allied Syrian forces made an airdrop in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, tracking Daesh-linked militants, local media reported according to zamanalwsl.net.

The overnight airdrop was to hunt Sabahi Ibrahim, dubbed: Abu Hamza, in the town of al-Shaheel, according to Deir Ezzor 24.

The former Daesh fighter has escaped but his son was arrested, the local news site said.

The U.S. forces have made dozens of airdrops in the former ISIS-held territory to eliminate Daesh sleeper cells. 

Also, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) backed by the US helicopters have launched security patrols north of Deir Ezzor in the past 48 hours.  At least 16 people were arrested.

The SDF is believed to be in control of about 25 percent of Syria and they fear that a U.S. withdrawal may pit them against regime troops and their allies, in the absence of a political agreement.

Iran-aligned Yemeni Houthi rebels have struck a power station in Saudi Arabia’s southern province of Jizan with a cruise missile, according to reports by the group’s Al Masirah TV channel.

Al Masirah said the reported attack took place in al-Shuqaiq city late on Wednesday evening. There was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the Saudi authorities.

On Thursday, White House officials confirmed US President Donald Trump had been briefed about an alleged strike on the kingdom’s “critical infrastructure”, without giving details of possible damage or casualties.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and continuing to consult with our partners and allies,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Commander Rebecca Rebarich meanwhile said such attacks were “a significant cause for concern and [put] innocent lives at risk”.

‘No end in sight’
The Houthis have stepped up missile and drone attacks in Saudi Arabia in recent weeks amid rising tensions throughout the Middle East fuelled by a bitter standoff between Iran and the United States, which is allied to several Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.

Last week, a missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s southern Abha airport allegedly carried out by the rebel group left 26 civilians wounded.

Several other recent drone and missile attacks targeting other southern regions of the kingdom, including Khamis Mushait and Jizan, were intercepted by Saudi forces.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed al-Attab, reporting from the Yemeni capital Sanaa, said there appeared to be “no end in sight” for attacks and reprisals between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.

“The conflict is escalating … and according to the Houthi’s military spokesperson, the coming days will witness more surprises for Saudi Arabia, especially via reprisal attacks by cruise missiles and drone operations,” al-Attab said.

The Houthis have been at war with a Saudi-UAE led military coalition in Yemen since 2015, when the latter launched an intervention in the form of a massive air campaign aimed at reinstalling the internationally-recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was earlier toppled by the Houthis.

Since then, the conflict has killed at least 10,000 people, according to the United Nations, while monitoring group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) on Wednesday said 91,600 people have been killed so far.

The war has unleashed what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 24 million Yemenis – more than two-thirds of the population – deemed to be in need of aid.

Regional tensions rise
Amid the unrest in Yemen, friction has also ratcheted up across the wider region in recent weeks, with Washington and Riyadh blaming Tehran for a spate of attacks on critical oil-related assets and infrastructure, including two tankers in the Gulf of Oman and four ships off the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Both incidents took place near the Strait of Hormuz, a major conduit for global oil supplies. Iran has denied responsibility for the attacks.

In the latest flashpoint on Thursday, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard force said it shot down a US “spy drone” over its territory, according to Iranian state television reports.

An anonymous US official later told news agencies that a US naval drone was downed over international airspace.

In moves it said were aimed at countering Iranian threats, Washington recently deployed forces including aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers and additional troops to the Middle East.

Despite the rising tensions, the US, Iran and Saudi Arabia have all said they do not want war to breakout in the region.

However, Washington has vowed to continue to pursue its “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran that was rolled out after US President Donald Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw from a landmark nuclear deal brokered between Iran and several other world powers, kickstarting increasingly fractious relations.