ISIS has been bombing regime-controlled areas of Deir Ezzor with rudimentary weaponized drones, the terrorist group’s first use of the tactic in Syria.
On Friday morning, a drone operated by the jihadist group dropped explosive devices on the Al-Jaz, Al-Barid and Howeika district of the eastern Syrian city, according to an activist group.
Al-Nateq did not elaborate on casualties or property destruction caused by the unusual bombing raid, the latest in a series of attacks conducted by ISIS using remotely-guided aircraft to drop explosives in Deir Ezzor.
Only days before, the pro-opposition 7al.me reported that seven people were killed in a more wide scale bombing attack on Deir Ezzor that featured several drones, showing the tactic’s potential for destruction.
Reports of ISIS weaponized drone attacks in the divided city began emerging in late October, however none of them have gone into details on the technical nature of the operations or what type of explosive is being used.
In one of the first reports of the new style of ISIS raid, Euphrates Post on October 20 said that a “reconnaissance plane” owned by ISIS dropped explosives on the Joura neighborhood of the city, killing one person and injuring four others.
Pro-regime media has also mentioned the weaponized drones, with Damascus Now reporting on November 3 that Syrian army forces downed an aircraft “carrying small explosives which was targeting areas of Deir Ezzor, injuring a number of citizens.”
ISIS has yet to deploy the bomb-bearing drones elsewhere in Syria, however the tactic was used recently in the fighting around Iraq’s second city of Mosul.
In mid-November, AFP reported that ISIS was dispatching small “off-the-shelf” drones equipped with hand grenades to target Iraqi troops.
The report explained that ISIS attached a device “similar to those intended to help fisherman drop their hooks farther out at sea” to the drones which are rigged with grenades set to explode.
Other than drones designed to drop small explosives, ISIS has alsoused explosives-packed drones dubbed “flying IEDs” to crash into targets.
In early October one of these “flying IEDs” injured two French paratroopers and killed two Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers outside Iraq’s Erbil.
Source: now.mmedia.me
Be the first to comment at "Deir Ezzor: IS bombing with drones"