By Canadian Press

IS militants kill at least 18 people in an attack on villagers collecting truffles in eastern Syria

Mar 6, 2024 | 8:58 AM

BEIRUT (AP) — Islamic State militants attacked villagers collecting truffles in eastern Syria on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people and leaving dozens injured and missing, opposition activists and pro-government media said.

It was one of the deadliest attacks by the Islamic State group in the area in more than a year, they said. The attack occurred in a desert area near the town of Kobajeb, in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq.

Despite the militant group’s defeat in Syria in March 2019, IS sleeper cells still carry deadly attacks in Syria and neighboring Iraq, across a wide swath of territory where the extremists had once run an Islamic caliphate.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said 18 people were killed and 16 were wounded in Wednesday’s attack. It said about 50 people were missing and might have been kidnapped by IS. Twelve vehicles were torched.

The Observatory said the dead included four members of the pro-government National Defense Forces, which had sent reinforcements to the area.

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The pro-government Dama Post media outlet said the death toll was as high as 44 and that some 13 vehicles used by the truffle farmers were set fire to and destroyed.

The disparate casualty figures could not be immediately reconciled. Different death tolls in Syria are not uncommon in the immediate aftermath of deadly attacks.

The truffles are a seasonal delicacy that can be sold for a high price and many in Syria, where 90% of the population lives below the poverty line, go out to collect them.

Since the truffle hunters work in large groups in remote areas, IS militants in previous years have repeatedly preyed on them, emerging from the desert to kill many and abduct others to be ransomed for money.

In February 2023, IS militants killed dozens of civilians and security officers in an attack on truffle hunters in the deserts of central Syria.

Bassem Mroue, The Associated Press