Islamic State has called on its fighters to fight against the new Syrian authorities

The jihadist group "Islamic State" has called on its fighters to fight against the new Syrian authorities, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a spokesman for the group. The agency notes that this is the first audio message from ISIS in two years.

According to spokesman Abu Hudhaifa An Ansari, members of the group in Syria must fight the "new Syrian regime, its secular government and its national army", and "have made this their priority".

His last statement was in January 2024 - in response to the war launched by Israel in the Gaza Strip after the attack on October 7, 2023. In a recording titled "Kill them wherever you find them", he called on ISIS supporters to attack the Jewish community around the world.

In 2014, ISIS seized vast territories in Syria and Iraq, killing many people and turning women and girls into sex slaves. In 2017, Iraq, backed by a US-led coalition, declared the group defeated on its soil. In Syria, it was defeated two years later by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). However, the jihadist organization maintains sleeper cells in desert areas and carries out sporadic attacks.

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the new Islamist president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS, the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), has sought to distance himself from his jihadist past. Last year, his country joined the international coalition against IS.

In recent weeks, the US military has transferred more than 5,700 suspected IS members from Syria to Iraq to ensure they are kept under surveillance. The prisons where they were previously held were controlled by the SDF coalition, which has since withdrawn some under pressure from the Syrian army.

This week, authorities evacuated the "Al-Hol" camp elsewhere in northern Syria, where thousands of relatives of foreign jihadists have fled.