BEIRUT – Islamic State jihadists killed 37 soldiers when they ambushed a bus yesterday in one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of their “caliphate” last year, said a monitor.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor targeted regime soldiers as they travelled home for the holidays.
The official Sana news agency reported that a “terrorist attack” on a bus killed “25 citizens” and wounded 13.
IS overran large parts of Syria and Iraq, and proclaimed a cross-border “caliphate”, in 2014, before multiple offensives in the two countries led to its territorial defeat.
The group was overcome in Syria in March last year, but sleeper cells continue to launch attacks, namely in the vast desert that stretches from the central province of Homs to Deir Ezzor and the border with Iraq.
“It was one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of the IS (self-proclaimed) caliphate” last year, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, referring to yesterday’s ambush.
He said the bus was attacked near the village of Shula by jihadists who detonated roadside bombs before opening fire on the soldiers from the army’s 4th Division.
At least 37 troops were killed, including eight officers, and 12 others wounded, said the war monitor in an updated toll, adding that some of those injured are in “critical condition”.
Two other buses that were part of the convoy managed to escape, it said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
In December 2017, Iraq’s then prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, announced a final victory against IS, and the group lost the last shred of its so-called caliphate in Syria in March last year.
But, sleeper cells have retained their ability to strike despite losing the territory they once held in both Iraq and Syria, operating mostly in the desert between the two countries.
In recent months, Syria’s Badia desert has been the scene of regular clashes between the jihadists and Russian-backed regime forces.
In April, 27 fighters loyal to the Damascus government and allied Iran-backed militiamen were killed in an IS attack near the desert city of Al-Sukhna, which is under regime control.
The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people since it started in 2011, said the Observatory.
The dead include more than 130,500 pro-government fighters, among them foreigners.
And since March 2019, more than 1,300 Syrian soldiers and allied pro-Iranian militiamen, and over 600 IS fighters, have died, said the monitor. – AFP, December 31, 2020
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