The Islamic State group said Thursday it had carried out an attack on a bus, killing 39 soldiers near Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria.
The Islamic State's propaganda arm Amaq said its fighters had "ambushed a bus transporting apostate Nusayri army elements," using a derogatory term for the Alawite sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
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"It was one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of the IS caliphate" last year, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human rights Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Two other buses that were part of the same convoy managed to escape.
In the wake of the civil war in Syria, ISIS declared a caliphate in 2014 and began conquering large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq. Multiple offenses by regional forces, assisted by world powers, led to its territorial defeat.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the group, died during a US attack in Idlib, Syria in October 2019. IS was overrun in Syria the following March, yet sleeper cells remain in Syria and Iraq, as well as other countries.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
