World News | Islamic State attacks in Syria kill at least 53

BEIRUT, Feb. 18 (AP) — The death toll from the Islamic State group’s attack on an army checkpoint and truffle collectors in central Syria has risen to at least 53, mostly civilians, state media and an opposition The War Watcher reported on Saturday.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday’s attack near the city center of Sokhna was the deadliest attack by the extremist group this year.

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The Observatory said the attacks targeted Syrian army checkpoints and people gathering wild truffles nearby, killing 68 people, including 61 civilians.

It said Islamic State fighters had arrived in the area on motorcycles. On Friday, 46 people were reported dead in the attack.

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The Observatory, which tracks the conflict in Syria, said Islamic State militants took advantage of the Feb. 6 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria, killing tens of thousands of people, in a deadly attack.

For the past two weeks, much of Syria’s attention has been focused on the earthquake.

Syrian state news agency SANA quoted the director of the general hospital in central Palmyra as saying they had received the remains of 46 civilians and seven soldiers.

Despite its defeat in Syria in March 2019, the Islamic State sleeper group continues to carry out attacks around Syria and Iraq, where it once declared a “caliphate”.

On Friday, the U.S. military said a helicopter raid by its forces in northeastern Syria killed a senior leader of the Islamic State group and wounded four U.S. service members.

It identified the slain Islamic State commander as Hamza Homsey.

Joint operations between U.S. forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are common in northeastern Syria and the eastern border with Iraq. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)