Syria’s defence ministry says the assault happened early within the morning on the Raqqa-Homs freeway.
Not less than 11 troopers and two civilians had been killed in an assault in northern Syria after a civilian bus was focused on a freeway connecting the cities of Raqqa and Homs, the Syrian defence ministry stated.
“At about 6:30 [03:30 GMT] this morning, a civilian bus was subjected to a terrorist assault on the Raqqa-Homs freeway in al-Jira space,” the ministry stated in a press release on Monday, including that three different military personnel had been wounded.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a warfare monitor, reported that ISIL (ISIS) cells had attacked a bus within the Jabal al-Bashari space in al-Raqqah desert, however stated it was a army automobile.
“The demise toll is believed to rise as there are some folks severely injured,” SOHR stated.
Nobody has claimed accountability for the assault to date, however ISIL beforehand managed the territory earlier than being pressured out and has continued brazen assaults because the group’s defeat on the battlefield three years in the past.
The town of Raqqa was the capital of the armed group’s self-proclaimed “caliphate”.
Syrian authorities frequently blame such assaults on the armed group.
Syria’s 11-year-old battle has carved the nation into numerous zones of management, with authorities troops and allied fighters controlling most territory. ISIL sleeper cells have been energetic in japanese, northern and central Syria.
A patch of the northwestern territory is held by Turkish-backed opposition forces and extra hardline teams, whereas US-backed Kurdish-led forces maintain the northeast.
Related assaults have occurred earlier than – one of many deadliest was in December 2020, when 28 folks had been killed in an assault on a bus on the primary freeway in Syria’s japanese Deir Az Zor province.
With Russian and Iranian help, the federal government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has clawed again a lot of the territory misplaced within the early levels of the warfare, which erupted in 2011 when the federal government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests.
The warfare has led to the deaths of lots of of hundreds of individuals, and the emergence of ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
Analysts have lengthy feared a resurgence of the group, but it surely has nonetheless been unable to considerably develop, and has been largely restricted to assaults by cells.