At least 30 killed in ISIL attack on Syrian military outpost

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An attack by ISIL on a military post near Palmyra in eastern Syria killed at least 30 Syrian army troops and Iranian-backed militiamen, residents and observers said.

A day after government forces drove the jihadists out of their last enclave in southern Damascus after weeks of relentless bombing, the militants used suicide bombers and armored vehicles in the dawn attack near a dam southeast of the ancient Roman city.

ISIL has twice seized Palmyra during Syria's civil war and destroyed priceless artifacts.

File photo of Palmyra, Syria /VCG Photo

A former resident from the eastern Homs countryside near Palmyra who is in touch with local people said at least 30 soldiers and militiamen were killed. He said the militants had come from hideouts in the vast stretch of desert they once controlled.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, said at least 26 people fighting on the Syrian government side were killed, including 17 non-Syrians, among them Iranians.

Pro-government social media sites gave lists of 16 officers and soldiers killed or injured and said it was verifying names of others who were killed.

In recent months the militants have stepped up hit-and-run attacks in an area whose terrain makes it difficult for the army to secure, relying on ambushes to replenish their weapons and equipment, activists say.

ISIL, which was driven from most of the Euphrates River valley last year, now controls only two besieged desert areas in eastern Syria. The group also captured a third of neighboring Iraq in 2014 but was largely defeated there last year.

(Top picture: Syrian government forces stand in front of a destroyed building on the southern outskirts of Damascus on May 21, 2018, after the Syrian army announced it was in complete control of the capital and its outskirts for the first time since 2012, after ousting the ISIL group from a last pocket of resistance. /VCG Photo)

Source(s): Reuters