Syria militant attack kills 12 oil workers

EXPLOSIVE DEVICES WENT OFF AS BUSES DROVE BY NEAR DEIR EZZOR

An attack in eastern Syria killed 12 oil field workers, a war monitor said yesterday, a day after Syrian Kurdish-led forces announced an offensive against militants.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which draws on extensive sources inside Syria, gave the toll of a dozen dead in the assault near an oil field west of Deir Ezzor. It blamed cells linked to the Daesh group. The militants have previously carried out attacks in the area, and a similar deadly assault took place last year.

Syria’s state news agency SANA gave a toll of 10 dead in the “terrorist attack that targeted three buses transporting workers” from Al Taim oil field, which is under Syrian government control.

Despite the defeat of its “caliphate” in Syria by US-backed Kurdish forces nearly four years ago, Daesh continues to claim attacks in Syria and across the border in Iraq.

“The attack began with explosive devices that went off as the buses drove by, and then the group’s militants shot at them,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

On Thursday the Kurdishled Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they had begun an offensive against Daesh, following a recent jihadist assault on a prison in Raqa, northwest of the attack on the bus.

SDF offensive

The SDF, which regularly launches operations against the militants, said its latest offensive aimed to eliminate Daesh from areas that had been “the source of the recent terrorist attacks”.

It said it was carrying out the operation alongside a USbacked anti-Daesh coalition, although the international force did not immediately confirm its participation.

In addition to the thwarted Raqa prison attack, SDF said Daesh fighters had recently carried out eight assaults in the Deir Ezzor area, Hasakeh and the Al Hol camp for displaced people, which houses family members of Daesh militants.

The SDF yesterday said 52 Daesh “mercenaries and facilitators” had been arrested in residential areas during its newly launched operation.

On Monday, the SDF said six Kurdish fighters were killed when Daesh attacked a security complex in Raqa, the militants’ former de facto capital in Syria, in a bid to free imprisoned militants.

Referring to recent Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish forces in northeast Syria, the SDF said Daesh was trying to “take advantage” of the situation.