A Daesh group attack killed at least 14 soldiers aboard a military bus in the Syrian desert Tuesday, a war monitor said, in the second such attack this year.
“At least 14 members of the regime forces were killed” and several others wounded “in a bloody IS attack on a military bus” in the desert near the ancient city of Palmyra, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Syria’s defence ministry confirmed the attack in a statement issued later, but gave a lower death toll.
It said eight soldiers had been killed in a “terrorist attack” on an army bus in the d esert, south of Palmyra.
Last week, IS killed nine Syrian government soldiers and militiamen in an attack on military posts in the eastern desert, according to the Britain-based Observatory.
IS proclaimed a “caliphate” in June 2014 across swathes of Syria and Iraq and launched a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019 but its remnants continue to carry out deadly hit-and-run attacks and ambushes, particularly from desert hideouts, targeting both pro-government forces and Kurdish-led fighters.
More than half a million people have been killed i n the civil war which erupted in Syria in 2011 after Damascus brutally suppressed anti-government protests.