Dozens of soldiers killed, injured in attack on military bus in Syria

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Dozens of soldiers were killed and injured in an attack on a military bus in the Syrian desert, or the Badia, on Sunday, Syria’s state media reported with a conflict monitor blaming the Islamic State (ISIS) for the offensive.

Thirteen soldiers were killed and 18 others were injured when a “terrorist attack” with multiple weapons targeted the bus on Sunday afternoon, SANA reported. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed that ISIS had launched the offense, raising the death toll to 15 soldiers. 

The Badia is a strategically valuable area as it contains Syria’s crucial gas fields and the east-west highway, which connects Deir ez-Zor to both Homs and Damascus.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The recent offensive comes two days after three regime soldiers died when their vehicle came under attack in Syria’s Palmyra, according to SOHR.

ISIS seized control of swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, declaring a so-called caliphate in 2014, but the terror group was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 respectively. The terror group continues to launch deadly attacks from the Syrian desert, which extends from the Syria’s capital of Damascus to the Iraqi border.  

In the latest edition of its weekly propaganda al-Nabaa magazine published Thursday, ISIS claimed it carried out seven attacks in Syria, killing and injuring 14 people.

Sixty-one pro-regime soldiers and Iran-affiliated militiamen were killed in alleged ISIS attacks in the desert since the beginning of the year, SOHR noted, with 69 members of the terror group were reported dead.

About half a million people have been killed and millions have been displaced since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011, according to AFP. The conflict later escalated into a devastating war.