BEIRUT (AP) — The demise toll from an assault by the Islamic State group towards a military checkpoint and folks amassing truffles in central Syria has risen to not less than 53, most of them civilians, state media and an opposition battle monitor reported Saturday.
The assault close to the central city of Sukhna on Friday was the deadliest by the extremist group since to this point this yr, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition battle monitor mentioned.
The Observatory mentioned the assault focused a Syrian military checkpoint and folks amassing wild truffles close by, killing 68 folks, together with 61 civilians. It mentioned IS fighters reached the world on bikes. On Friday, it reported that the assault killed 46.
The Observatory, which tracks Syria’s battle, mentioned the IS gunmen took benefit of the Feb. 6 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria killing tens of hundreds of individuals to hold out their lethal assault. The eye in Syria has been largely targeted on the earthquake over the previous two weeks.
Syria’s state information company, SANA, quoted the top of the final hospital within the central city of Palmyra as saying that they’ve acquired the our bodies of 46 civilians and 7 troopers.
Regardless of their defeat in Syria in March 2019, Islamic State sleeper cells nonetheless conduct assaults round Syria and Iraq, the place they as soon as declared a “caliphate.”
On Friday, the U.S. army mentioned a helicopter raid led by its forces in northeast Syria left a senior chief with the Islamic State group lifeless and 4 American service members wounded. It recognized the killed IS commander as Hamza al-Homsi.
Joint operations between the U.S. army and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are frequent in northeast and japanese Syria alongside the border with Iraq.