The Khalid Ibn al-Walid Army, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in June 2016, took over villages in the Syrian south Feb. 16 after breaking free from the siege that opposition Syrian factions had imposed on it for years in the Yarmouk Basin in Daraa’s countryside. This occurred a few kilometers from bordering Jordanian villages, and there has since been increased activity at the northern Jordanian border.

On Feb. 16, the Khalid Ibn al-Walid Army widely deployed its troops and took advantage of the Syrian factions’ preoccupation with the ongoing battles since Feb. 12 — otherwise known as “Death Rather than Humiliation” — between the Syrian regime and Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham (Liberation of the Levant Committee) in the south.

Hassan Abu Bakr, the spokesman for the Army of the Revolution in the Southern Front, said that the Khalid Ibn al-Walid Army tightened its grip on dozens of Syrian villages, namely al-Shajara, Jamla, Abidin, Qusayr, Nafaa, Ain Thakar, Tasil, Adwan, Jillen and Sahm.

Abu Bakr told Al-Monitor, “Khalid Ibn al-Walid Army confiscated 130 mm cannons with a maximum firing range of 27 kilometers [17 miles] and a limited amount of ammunition from the opposition. It also took possession of T-55 tanks and 122 mm field guns as well as medium and light weapons, thus threatening large cities in northern Jordan such as Ar-Ramtha and Irbid [Jordan's second-largest city], where around 1 million people live.”