SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Twenty-eight people were killed in an attack on a bus along a main highway in Syria’s Deir al-Zor province that borders Iraq, Syrian state media said on Wednesday.
A senior military defector in the area said the vehicle carried soldiers and pro-government militias who had finished their leave and were on their way back to their base in the desolate, according to Reuters.
Reuters cited a source as saying that at least thirty soldiers were killed, mostly from the Syrian army’s elite Fourth Brigade, which has a strong presence in the rich oil-producing province since Islamic State (ISIS) militants were ousted at the end of 2017.
Deir al-Zor residents and intelligence sources say there has been a rise in recent months of ambushes and hit-and-run attacks by remnants of Islamic State militants who hid in caves in the mainly desert region.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 37 soldiers including eight officers were killed in the attack which targeted the regime soldiers as they traveled home for holidays, AFP reported.
As many as 12 other soldiers were wounded, the war monitor said, adding that some of those injured were in “critical condition”, according to AFP.
The observatory said two other buses which were part of the convoy managed to escape.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
ISIS 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.
The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people since it started in 2011, according to the observatory. The dead include more than 130,500 pro-government fighters, among them foreigners.
