5 assassination attempts on Syrian president, ministers foiled: UN
UNITED NATIONS
The Syrian president, interior minister and foreign minister were the targets of five foiled assassination attempts last year, the U.N. chief said in a report on threats posed by the ISIL terrorist organization released on Feb. 11.
The report said President Ahmad al-Sharaa was targeted in northern Aleppo, the country’s most populous province, and southern Daraa by a group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, which was assessed to be a front for ISIL.
The report, issued by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and prepared by the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism, gave no dates or details of the attempts against al-Sharaa or Syrian Interior Minister Anas Hasan Khattab and Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani.
The assassination attempts are more evidence that the militant group remains intent on undermining the new Syrian government and “actively exploiting security vacuums and uncertainty” in Syria, the report said.
It said Sharaa was “assessed to be a primary target” of ISIL. And it said the front group provided ISIL with plausible deniability and "improved operational capacity.”
Sharaa has led Syria since his rebel forces ousted longtime Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024, ending a 14-year civil war.
In November, his government joined the international coalition formed to counter ISIL, which once controlled a large part of Syria.
The U.N. counter-terrorism experts said the militant group still operates across the country, primarily attacking security forces, particularly in the north and northeast.
In one ambush attack on Dec. 13, 2025, on U.S. and Syrian forces near Palmyra, two U.S. servicemen and an American civilian were killed and three Americans and three members of Syria's security forces were wounded. President Donald Trump retaliated, launching military operations to eliminate ISIL fighters.
According to the U.N. counter-terrorism experts, the terror group maintains an estimated 3,000 fighters across Iraq and Syria, the majority of them based in Syria.
The U.S. military in late January began transferring ISIL detainees who were held in northeastern Syria to Iraq to ensure they remain in secure facilities. Iraq has said it will prosecute the militants.
Syrian government forces had taken control of a sprawling camp housing thousands of ISIL detainees following the withdrawal of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as part of a ceasefire with the group.
The report released on Feb. 11 to the U.N. Security Council said as of December 2025, before the ceasefire deal, more than 25,740 people remained in the al-Hol and Roj camps in the northeast, more than 60 percent of them children, with thousands more in other detention centers.