22/02/2026
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22/02/2026
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This is a locator map for Syria with its capital, Damascus. (AP)
BEIRUT, Feb 22, (AP): The Islamic State group has blasted Syria’s interim president calling him a “puppet without a soul” controlled by Western countries, adding that his fate eventually will be similar to that of ousted leader Bashar Assad.
In an audio message released late Saturday by the group’s spokesman, who identifies himself as Abu Huzaifa al-Ansari, he called on IS followers around the world to attack Western targets as they have in past years.
Al-Ansari sent greetings to IS fighters from the group’s leader Abu Hafs al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi who was named as the head of the group three years ago.
The audio is the first to be released by the group in months and comes after IS was blamed for attacks that left dozens dead or wounded in recent months in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and other parts of the world.
In December, the group was blamed for an attack in central Syria that left three Americans dead and triggered intense US airstrikes on the extremists’ suspected hideouts in the country.
Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, IS sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries, where they once declared a caliphate.
The UN chief said earlier this month in a report on threats posed by IS that Syria’s president, interior minister and foreign minister were the targets of five foiled assassination attempts last year.
In December 2024, insurgents led by now interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, marched to Damascus and removed then-President Bashar Assad from power, striking a severe blow to Iran’s influence in the war-torn country. Assad belonged to the minority Alawite sect in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country.
Since then, al-Sharaa, a former leader of al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, has improved his relations with Western countries and last year became the first Syrian head of state to visit Washington since Syria’s independence in 1946.
