Islamic State militants stage
an attack at a crossing frequently used by Iraqi and Syrian civilians seeking safety in northeastern Syria, killing at least 37 people, officials and activists said.
BEIRUT — Islamic State militants staged a surprise attack early Tuesday at a crossing frequently used by Iraqi and Syrian civilians seeking safety in northeastern Syria, killing at least 37 people, mostly civilians, Kurdish officials and activists said.
The militants struck before dawn after sneaking into the village of Rajm Sleibi, located along a front line that separates the Kurdish-controlled Hassakeh province from Islamic State-held areas further south. Some militants reportedly blew themselves up at a Kurdish checkpoint while others attacked sleeping civilians in a nearby temporary camp sheltering hundreds of displaced people who fled Islamic State-controlled territory.
The International Rescue Committee said thousands of people from the Iraqi city of Mosul have traveled west to the Sleibi crossing since October, often via smugglers. In a statement, it said several children were among the dead and wounded.
“It was 3 in the morning when Daesh came and started to shoot at people,” said Abdulah Khalef Hamid, an Iraqi refugee from Mosul, who said his mother-in-law was killed in Tuesday’s attack.
Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.
Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the main Kurdish fighting force in Syria, said the attack started with an early morning assault by ISIS militants on a checkpoint in Sleibi belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed and Kurdish-dominated force that fights ISIS.
The militants then “committed a massacre” against civilians as they sought to enter SDF-controlled territory, Khalil said.
He said the attack came a few hours after ISIS suicide bombers dressed in civilian clothes sneaked into the town of Shaddadeh and attacked SDF forces, triggering clashes.
Survivors from the attack on the camp said the militants arrived in four cars before shooting several people and kidnapping others.
“They were shouting ‘You are infidels and you are going toward the infidels,’ ” said Fatima, a displaced Syrian woman who asked that her last name not be used. “They shot at the checkpoint and at the civilians there, and they dragged the youngsters and put them in the cars and drove them away.”
Issam Amin, a media activist in Hassakeh, said the victims arriving at the city’s hospitals had stabbing and gunshot wounds.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the Syrian conflict through activists on the ground, said Tuesday’s attack included suicide bombers and heavy clashes with the SDF.
The Observatory put the death toll at 38, including 23 civilians, many of them Iraqi. Hawar, a news agency for the semi-autonomous Kurdish areas in Syria, put the death toll at 37. Other reports put the death toll at 46.
In Syria, the SDF is now fighting to recapture the town of Tabqa, an important militant stronghold southeast of the ISIS group’s de facto capital, Raqqa. Kurdish officials said Kurdish-led opposition fighters have pushed the extremists almost out of Tabqa. They said ISIS continues to hold the nearby dam on the Euphrates River.
In Iraq, ISIS is fighting for survival.
ISIS claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks through its Aamaq media arm.
Elsewhere in Syria, opposition activists said ISIS killed 10 of its own after accusing them of selling weapons to arms traders. The activists said the killings took place in the Mayadeen area in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border.
The Observatory and Omar Abu Laila, a Europebased activist with contacts in the area, said the men were all Iraqis and were shot dead Monday in front of dozens of onlookers.