Five extremists were killed on Monday in a US-led coalition airstrike in eastern Syria, said coalition spokesman James Rawlinson. He said the raid targeted an ISIS cell near Busayrah, a town in the Deir Ezzour province, the first such strike since the defeat of the terrorist group. "This operation eliminated five terrorists who played a key role in facilitating attacks across the region against security forces and innocent civilians," he told AFP. The five extremists were all Syrian, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor. It was the first aerial attack by coalition warplanes since ISIS was driven out of its last holdout in Syria four months ago, the Britain-based group added. A US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces announced it had expelled the extremists from their last patch of territory in eastern Syria, the town of Baghouz, on March 23. That came after a months-long campaign backed by coalition airstrikes. The victory spelled the end of the extremists’ proto-state declared in 2014 after ISIS seized large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq. But despite losing their territory, ISIS fighters continue to launch regular attacks across war-torn Syria. They have claimed operations in SDF-held areas, including targeted killings and setting fire to vital wheat crops. In Syrias vast desert, they have repeatedly hit regime forces with deadly attacks and ambushes. They also maintain a presence in the northwestern region of Idlib, which is dominated by an Al-Qaeda-linked radical group. The US-led coalition has said it is backing the SDF in northeastern Syria against thousands of remaining ISIS loyalists. "The coalition will continue to enable partner forces in their pursuit of enduring defeat of ISIS," Rawlinson said. The war in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests.