Suspected ISIS attack kills over 50 in Syrian desert

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – At least 53 people were killed on Friday in a suspected ISIS ambush in the Syrian desert of Homs while they were hunting truffles, a watchdog and the state media confirmed.

The truffle hunters were targeted by suspected ISIS militants on motorbikes in the southwest of Sokhna town in the east of Homs, according to the state media, SANA.

“They were shot in the heads,” Dr. Walid Odeh, the director of Palmyra hospital, told the media.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) confirmed that the attack killed at least 46 civilians and seven soldiers.

The group did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack.

Last Saturday around 16 people, mostly civilians, were similarly killed by another ISIS attack in the same area. Whiles dozens of others were kidnapped, around 25 of them were released later after the group confirmed they had no affiliation with the government and militias, according to the SOHR.

The attack is one of the deadliest by the terror group in more than a year since the group’s attack on Ghwayran prison in the northeast of Syria last January, where over 100 civilians were killed along with another 268 members of the group.

Many civilians, including women and children, have been targeted during the truffles harvest season, which begins in February and continues throughout April.

However, the terror group was announced territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, it had not lost its ability to launch attacks on security and civilian targets, according to the United Nations.

Around 6,000 to 10,000 fighters still operate under the group’s banner in both Syria and Iraq, where they infiltrate through the porous borders, per a UN report.