Image: APA/AFP
The attack occurred in the eastern city of Al-Suchna, as reported by the state agency SANA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Friday evening. It was initially unclear whether the attackers shot their victims or killed them with explosives.
The terrorists were armed and on motorcycles, said the head of the observatory, Rami Abdel-Rahman, the German Press Agency. First, the IS fighters attacked a checkpoint and killed at least seven soldiers, then killed 46 civilians. According to the activists and Sana, people had collected truffles near the desert city before the attack. According to the observatory, several terrorists also managed to escape, along with a few victims.
Al-Suchna is located in the central province of Homs and became a strategically important IS bastion in 2015 before Syrian government troops expelled the terrorist militia from there two years later. Years ago, IS controlled large areas of Syria and neighboring Iraq. In the meantime, the IS has been defeated there militarily, but there are still active terrorist cells in both countries that carry out attacks.
Shortly before the attack became known, the US Department of Defense announced that the US military had killed a high-ranking IS member in a helicopter attack in north-eastern Syria.
Several dead in Pakistan attack
A serious attack also took place in Pakistan on Friday. Armed terrorists stormed a police station in the city of Karachi and killed several officers. In addition to at least two police officers and a civilian, three of the attackers were also killed in the act on Friday evening (local time), the police said. 13 security forces were injured. The terrorists had taken several officials temporarily hostage, a police officer said.
There was an hour-long exchange of gunfire in the building. One of the attackers blew himself up after being surrounded by security forces on the roof of the building. The militant Islamist Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
Since the Pakistani Taliban canceled a ceasefire with the government in Islamabad at the end of last year, they have claimed responsibility for several attacks. The attacks are often aimed at security forces. Authorities say the Taliban are also responsible for an attack on a mosque in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar that recently killed 84 people, most of them police officers. The Pakistani Taliban are independent of the Islamist Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan.
Source: Nachrichten
