UN: IS front groups twice targeted Syria's president; five plots foiled

Key developments

A UN report says five separate assassination plots against Syria’s president and senior ministers were foiled last year, with President Ahmed al-Sharaa singled out as the primary target. According to the report, Sharaa was targeted twice — once in northern Aleppo and once in southern Daraa — by Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, an Islamic State front group that also carried out a church bombing in Damascus last summer. A regional intelligence official confirmed that several attempts were disrupted after Syria’s security services received warnings from a neighbouring country.

The UN warns that IS has intensified recruitment since the fall of Assad in December 2024, branding Sharaa an apostate and circulating images of his meeting with US president Donald Trump to underline his alleged turn to the West. The group is exploiting security vacuums and operating through multiple front organisations across Syria and Iraq, where the UN estimates about 3,000 fighters remain. Damascus has joined the international anti-IS coalition and recently assumed control of prisons and camps in the northeast, including al-Hawl camp — home to nearly 25,000 relatives of suspected IS members — which analysts call a "ticking timebomb." The report notes IS has continued attacks since Assad’s fall, including a mid-December strike that killed three American soldiers and wounded three Syrians, as reported by The Guardian

This story has also been reported by: Al Jazeera