An earlier death toll of 26 troops has been revised to 33 as a result of an attack by the Islamic State group on Syrian government forces in the east of the war-torn nation.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the shooting that took place on an army bus on Thursday night was the extremist group’s bloodiest assault on government forces this year.
Despite losing their final pocket of land in Syria in 2019, IS has had a presence in the wide Syrian desert, where they have operated out of to conduct ambushes and hit-and-run strikes.
The death toll from the army bus attack rose to 33 soldiers,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the British-based monitoring group which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.
The jihadists surrounded the bus in the desert near Mayadeen, in Deir Ezzor province, and opened fire, the Observatory reported on Friday.
IS claimed the attack later Friday, saying its fighters had carried out an ambush “on two military buses”, targeting them “with heavy weapons and rocket-propelled grenades” and setting one on fire, according to a statement from the jihadists’ Amaq news agency.
According to a source in the army, the “terrorist attack” resulted in a number of military losses, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.
IS “has recently been stepping up its deadly military attacks… aiming to cause as many deaths as possible,” according to Abdel Rahman.
The jihadists hope to demonstrate that IS “is still active and powerful despite the targeting of its leaders” by doing this, he told AFP.
Last week, IS declared the death of Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, its leader, who it said was slain in combat in northwest Syria, and announced the appointment of a new head.
Attacks by IS members in Syria’s north and northeast have risen recently.
According to the Observatory, an IS strike earlier this week in the former jihadist stronghold of Raqa province claimed the lives of 10 Syrian army and pro-government fighters.
After the administration of President Bashar al-Assad suppressed nonviolent protests in 2011, conflict broke out in Syria. Since then, it has attracted international Islamists and foreign powers.
More than 500,000 people have died in the fighting, and half of the pre-war population has been evicted from their homes.
