The death toll from the attack by the terrorist militia Islamic State on an army bus in eastern Syria on Thursday evening has risen to 33 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) announced on Saturday.
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An earlier assessment by this UK-based NGO, which has an extensive source network in Syria, put 26 dead.
Thursday night’s attack was the deadliest since early August by the extremist group against government forces this year, the OSDH said.
“The death toll from the attack on the army bus has risen to 33 soldiers,” said Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of this NGO.
The jihadists surrounded the bus in the desert near Mayadine in Deir Ezzor province and opened fire, the OSDH said on Friday.
The IS claimed responsibility for the attack through its propaganda organ Amaq and claimed that it had attacked “two military buses” and attacked them “with heavy weapons and rockets”.
For its part, a Syrian military source quoted by the official agency Sana confirmed that a “terrorist group attacked a military bus southeast of Deir Ezzor on Thursday evening.” Soldiers were killed and injured in the attack, the source added, without giving a number.
ISIS has recently stepped up its attacks in Syria, particularly from the desert areas to which its fighters have retreated after losing the vast areas they controlled in that country in 2019. Four of their successive leaders have since been killed.
“ISIS has intensified its attacks lately […] in a message to ensure the group remains present and active despite the deaths of its leaders,” Abdel Rahman told AFP on Friday.
Four IS leaders have been killed in a row since 2019. On August 3, the extremist formation announced the death of the youngest and the appointment of a successor.
According to the IS, he was killed by an enemy jihadist group that controls the province of Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in northwestern Syria.
In 2019, Washington claimed to have killed ISIS’s first leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in an operation in Syria.