SYRIA - Islamic State is ready to rise again from the Syrian desert as it seeks to exploit the fall of Assad with a new wave of attacks, according to the leader of the country’s western-backed troops. The warning from General Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), comes amid fears that the jihadists could capitalise on the chaos and the growing spectre of a second civil war in the country’s east. The SDF helped bring to an end Isis’s so-called caliphate in 2019, but Abdi said remnants of the group were now looking to benefit from a security vacuum after Bashar Al-Assad was toppled this month. The SDF, supported by the United States, Britain and other western countries, is in a confrontation with Turkey, which backs Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group that has seized Damascus and most of Syria.