The United Nations has reported that five separate plots to assassinate Syria's president or senior ministers were thwarted last year, according to a new report on Islamic State (IS). The Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa was targeted twice, once in northern Aleppo and once in southern Daraa, by Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, an IS front group that also bombed a church in Damascus last summer.
A regional intelligence official confirmed that Sharaa had faced assassination attempts that were foiled after intelligence from a neighbouring country was provided to Syria's security establishment. Since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, IS has intensified its recruitment, denouncing Sharaa as an apostate and publishing photos of him with US President Donald Trump as evidence of his abandonment of Islamist roots.
The UN report states that IS is focused on destabilising the new government in Damascus, exploiting security vacuums and uncertainty in the country. It notes that Sharaa is the primary target for IS in Syria, and that the group operates through various front groups to maintain flexibility. IS continues to pose a challenge in both Iraq and Syria, with an estimated 3,000 fighters across the two countries, the majority in Syria.
Damascus joined the international coalition against IS in November and has since taken control of prisons and camps holding suspected IS fighters and their relatives, including al-Hawl camp, which houses nearly 25,000 relatives of suspected IS fighters. Analysts describe the camp as a 'ticking timebomb'. IS has carried out several attacks since Assad's fall, including one in mid-December that killed three Americans and wounded three Syrians.
