By Bassem Mroue | Associated Press
BEIRUT — 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 Musab al-Furati, he called on IS followers around the world to attack Jewish and Western targets as they have in past years.
Al-Furati 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 U.S. 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 U.N. 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-Qaida’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.
Al-Furati said that Iran and Assad in Syria were replaced “with a regime that is subjected to American influence.”
“Syria today is ruled by the Crusaders after they placed a leader who is a puppet without a soul,” al-Furati said. He vowed new attacks in the country saying that “Syria has entered a new era of defense and the convoys of jihad will eventually march in Syria.”
The audio, which is supposed to mark the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan did not mention the transfer of 5,704 suspected IS detainees from prisons in northeast Syria to Iraq in recent weeks. Al-Furati only said that everyone is scared of the detainees whom the Americans, Shiites and Kurdish fighters are doing all they can to make sure they don’t escape.
Al-Furati also did not mention al-Hol camp that used to house more than 24,000 people, mostly women and children linked to IS, that is now almost empty after government forces took control of it last month from the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
He acknowledged that IS lost fighters over the past two years because of attacks by the U.S.-led coalition against IS. The Syrian government officially joined the coalition in November.
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