A handout picture shows the scene of an attack targeting a bus transporting regime soldiers in Deir Ezzor.File /SANA/AFP

Gulf Today Report

Gunmen ambushed buses traveling down a highway in central Syria late on Sunday, killing at least 15 people in Syria, mostly government soldiers, state media reported.

A war monitor said on Monday that this is the second such road ambush in recent days.

Another attack Wednesday killed nearly 30 people, most of them soldiers returning home for the holidays. Islamic State militants were believed to be behind that attack.

A handout picture shows the scene of an attack targeting a bus transporting soldiers in Deir Ezzor.File/SANA/AFP

The ambush late on Sunday resulted in the deaths of eight soldiers, four allied fighters and three civilians, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, updating an earlier toll.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the monitor said Daesh was to blame.

Another 15 people were wounded, with cars and fuel tankers also attacked, in the Wadi Al Azib area of Hama province.

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Syria’s official news agency SANA said the "terrorist attack" killed nine people, all civilians.

Last week, Daesh said it ambushed a bus on Dec.30 in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, killing at least 37 soldiers.

The extremist group overran large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a cross-border “caliphate” there in 2014, before multiple offensives in the two countries led to its territorial defeat.

The group was overcome in Syria in March 2019, but sleeper cells continue to launch attacks.

More than 387,000 people have been killed and millions forced from their homes since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011.