BALADI NEWS
A US-led coalition air strike killed five jihadists in eastern Syria on Monday, a spokesman said, in the first such raid since the collapse of the Islamic State group's "caliphate".
"Coalition forces conducted a strike against a Daesh cell near Busayrah", a town in Deir Ezzor province, said coalition spokesman James Rawlinson.
"This operation eliminated five terrorists who played a key role in facilitating attacks across the region against security forces and innocent civilians," he told AFP.
The five jihadists were all Syrian, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
It was the first aerial attack by coalition warplanes since IS was driven out of its last holdout in Syria four months ago, the Britain-based group added.
A US-backed, Kurdish-led force announced it had expelled ISIS from their last patch of territory in eastern Syria, the town of Baghouz, on March 23.
That came after a months-long campaign backed by coalition air strikes.
The Syrian Democratic Forces' victory spelled the end of the jihadist proto-state declared in 2014 after ISIS seized large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
But despite losing their territory, ISIS fighters continue to launch regular attacks across war-torn Syria.
They have claimed operations in SDF-held areas, including targeted killings and setting fire to vital wheat crops.
The US-led coalition has said it is backing the SDF in northeastern Syria against thousands of remaining ISIS loyalists.
"The coalition will continue to enable partner forces in their pursuit of enduring defeat of Daesh," Rawlinson said.
Source: Daily Mail.