5 Syrian soldiers killed, 20 injured in ISIL attack: State media

Five Syrian soldiers have been killed and 20 injured in a rocket attack on a military transport bus in the east of the country.

Sunday’s attack took place at approximately 7pm (17:00 GMT), Syrian state media reported on Monday, adding that a military vehicle in the Badia area came under a rocket attack followed by artillery shelling by ISIL (ISIS) fighters.

ISIL, which declared a caliphate straddling parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014, has lost all the territory that was under its control in 2019.

However, the group continues to wage a low-level fight in both countries, launching frequent hit-and-run raids from desert hideouts on either side of the border with Iraq.

In mid-December, Kurdish forces in the north of the country said, backed by the US military, they killed five suspected fighters in an airborne operation in the Deir Az Zor province.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, which controls the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northeastern Syria, conducted the raid near the village of al-Busaira.