Deir al-Zor standoff sees ISIS deploy suicide ‘tank bomb’

An ISIS suicide bomber detonated a tank at the Syrian military airport outside the city of Deir al-Zor, one of the last remaining government strongholds in the east of the country, jihadi social media and a monitoring group said Friday, according to The Daily Star.

One ISIS Twitter account published two photographs of a smiling man it named Abu al-Farouq al-Libi, who it said carried out the “suicide operation.”

The Al-Qaeda offshoot ISIS has been gradually consolidating control of the oil-producing Deir al-Zor region this year. President Bashar Assad’s forces have held on to the local military air base and parts of the provincial capital.

On Dec. 6, militants entered the base but were swiftly repelled. Syria’s state news agency SANA said the army had pursued ISIS fighters in the area around Deir al-Zor base and killed many of them.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the tank blew up on the outskirts of the base but gave no details of casualties or other damage. After the blast, clashes raged for several hours, killing at least nine ISIS militants. Of the casualties one was a Tunisian and another from Morocco, it said.

The Observatory said that after the battle, regime forces were able to retrieve three of the enemy corpses – they were placed on a truck, which then drove around areas of Deir al-Zor under regime control.