ISIL urges members to fight Syria's new government

BEIRUT

The ISIL terrorist organization has blasted the Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa calling him a “puppet without a soul” controlled by Western countries, adding that his fate eventually will be similar to that of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

In an audio message released late on Feb. 21 by the group’s spokesman, who identifies himself as Abu Huzaifa al-Ansari, he called on ISIL followers around the world to attack Jewish and Western targets as they have in past years.

The audio is the first to be released by the group in two years.

Ansari said that Iran and Assad in Syria were replaced “with a regime that is subjected to American influence.”

“Syria today is ruled by the Crusaders after they placed a leader who is a puppet without a soul,” Ansari said.

He vowed new attacks in the country saying that “Syria has entered a new era of defense and the convoys of jihad will eventually march in Syria.”

The audio, which is supposed to mark the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan did not mention the transfer of 5,704 suspected ISIL detainees from prisons in northeast Syria to Iraq in recent weeks.

He acknowledged that ISIL lost fighters over the past two years because of attacks by the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL. The Syrian government officially joined the coalition in November 2025.

The U.N. chief said earlier this month in a report on threats posed by ISIL that Syria’s president, interior minister and foreign minister were the targets of five foiled assassination attempts last year.

Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, ISIL sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries, where they once declared a caliphate.

In December 2025, the group was blamed for an attack in central Syria that left three Americans dead and triggered intense U.S. airstrikes on the extremists’ suspected hideouts in the country.