DUBAI: Russian warplanes carried out 40 airstrikes in Deash areas in Syria on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory reported.

Russia targeted areas in Aleppo, Hama and Raqqa throughout the day, the Britain-based war monitor reported.

Meanwhile national defense forces continued desert operations between Deir Ezzor and Homs in order to secure the road connecting the two governorates. The operations came after reports of escalation of Daesh activity.

Last week Daesh militants killed at least eight regime loyalists in eastern Syria, the latest in a series of deadly extremist attacks.

Five Syrian soldiers and three pro-regime militia fighters were among those killed in the Daesh attack on one of their positions in a desert region of Deir Ezzor province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Eleven others were wounded, some of them critically, meaning the death toll could climb, the war monitor added.

Daesh in 2014 overran large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a cross-border “caliphate” before multiple offensives in the two countries led to its territorial defeat.

The group was overcome in Syria in March 2019, but sleeper cells continue to launch attacks in the vast Badia desert spanning from central Syria eastwards to the border with Iraq.

Since the start of the year, Daesh sleeper cells have upped their attacks on regime forces, killing at least 44, including soldiers and foreign paramilitaries, the Observatory says.