20 Soilders Killed in Gunmen Attack in Syria

Gunmen attacked a bus carrying Syrian military on Friday in the country's east, according to opposition reports, killing at least 20 people and wounding more.

The incident on Thursday night was thought to have been carried out by members of the Islamic State organization, whose sleeper cells continue conduct deadly operations in some areas of Syria after their defeat in 2019.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is headquartered in Britain, 23 Syrian troops were killed and 10 were injured in the attack on a route in the desert close to the eastern town of Mayadeen in the Iraqi bordering Deir el-Zour province.

Syrian authorities have revoked BBC's media credentials and charged the British network with disseminating "fake news."

Twenty troops were reportedly killed and additional soldiers were injured, according to another activist group that follows news in eastern Syria.

An anonymous military officer was reported by the Syrian state news agency SANA as stating that the incident took place Thursday night and "killed and wounded a number of soldiers." No more information or a breakdown of the casualty figures were provided.

In June 2014, IS established a caliphate over sizable portions of Syria and Iraq. They lost territory over time and were defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later.

At least 53 persons, primarily labourers but possibly some members of the Syrian government security forces, were killed when IS sleeper cells targeted individuals gathering truffles close to the central town of Sukhna in February. This attack was one of their worst in a year.

It is too soon to determine whether the recent round of assaults heralds a fresh revival by the extremists that terrorized millions of people in Syria and Iraq, according to experts who study Jihadi groups.

Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, the extremist group's little-known leader who had been in charge since November, passed away in Syria last week, and his replacement was proclaimed by IS. Since the group's founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by American soldiers in northwest Syria in 2019, he was the group's fourth fatality.

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