Islamic State Suicide Bomber Detonates Tank in Deir Ezzor

An Islamic State (ISIS) suicide bomber detonated a tank at a Syrian air base in Deir Azzor, an oil-producing province in eastern Syria, Reuters reports, citing social media posts by jihadi sympathizers.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “The tank blew up on the outskirts of the air base,” and was followed by clashes Friday morning.

The militant group has slowly consolidated its control over the province over the course of this year. However, regime forces have retained control over the local military air base after repelling militants from entering the base on December 6.

The oilfields are a major source of revenue for the Islamic State. The group has been the target of U.S.-led strikes since September, but remains in control of large swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory.

Syrian Regime and ISIS Have Been ‘Ignoring’ Each Other on the Battlefield, Report Finds

Syria’s military and ISIS have been ignoring each other on the battlefield, focusing instead on eliminating smaller rivals, according to NBC News.

“Around 64 percent of verifiable ISIS attacks in Syria this year targeted other non-state groups,” according to data analysis from the IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center (JTIC).

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been accused of aiding the rise of Islamist extremist groups like ISIS in order to bolster his own standing. In a recent interview with Paris Match, Assad denied the claim.

However, JTIC’s data suggests that ISIS and Assad’s security forces have embraced the “clever strategy” of mostly “ignoring each other,” and that “of more than 982 counterterrorism operations for the year up through November 21, just 6 percent directly targeted ISIS.”

In the past several weeks, Assad’s forces have ramped up their attacks on ISIS, resulting in the death of hundreds of civilians.

Survivors and Lawyers Describe Torture Endured in Regime Detention Centers

“There are now more than 100 detention centers holding around 200,000 people jailed since the Syrian conflict began in 2011,” AFP reports.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “up to 12,000 people have died in these prisons.”

Those that have survived claim that the dark memories of detention never leave them.

“Memories come back to haunt me every day, when I eat, when I sleep,” a former detainee named Samaan told AFP. “It’s so awful in there. Some things you just can’t talk about.”

Another former prisoner, known as Masri, describes his psychological torture. “They would insult my wife, and they would tell me they would go to the house and rape her,” he recalls.

“Like most detainees, Samaan and Masri … were transferred from secret detention in Damascus to the infamous Adra and Saydnaya jails after trials they dismiss as farcical,” according to AFP.

In August, Human Rights Watch released what it called “horrific accounts” by former detainees corroborating allegations of a regime defector who claimed that the Assad regime was responsible for the mass death of prisoners in its custody.

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