IS militants attack, kill civilians in villages
BEIRUT: Islamic State attacked villages near the only usable road that links the government-controlled cities of Aleppo and Homs yesterday, killing many residents, Syrian state media and a Britain-based war monitoring group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 52 people, civilians and fighters on both sides, had been killed and dozens injured. At least 25 were civilians, including five children, and three of them died in execution-style killings, it said.
State-run SANA news agency said Islamic State fighters killed 20 people in the village of Aqarib al-Safi, east of Hama city, before the army and allied militia repulsed the attack.
The Observatory said government forces and their allies took back Aqarib al-Safi and nearby positions after heavy clashes, reversing the gains IS made yesterday.
The militants had said ear- lier on social media that they had captured the village.
Many of the people in the area belong to the Ismaili sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, and would be regarded by IS as infidels. In 2015, IS killed 46 civilians in the nearby al-Mabouja village, the Observatory said.
The army and its allies hold the road and a small strip of land on each side, with IS controlling the eastern area and Syrian rebel groups the west.
The Observatory said yes- terday’s attack was the most violent so far this year by IS along the road.
IS has recently lost large swathes of territory, mainly in the north, to separate military campaigns, including by the Russian-backed Syrian army and US-backed militias.
The jihadist group still mounts attacks in Syria, however, including a swift advance in December to capture Palmyra, which it held for several weeks before the army retook the city.
Separately, Syrian state television said IS shelled a government-held district in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor and killed 13 people yesterday, many of them children.
Syria’s conflict, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people. The multi-sided war has drawn in global powers, made half the country’s population homeless, and allowed ultra-hardline jihadists to expand. – Reuters