(Zaman Al Wasl)- Islamic State suicide attackers killed at least 50 people in a triple car bomb attack on Thursday among a group of refugees in northeast Syria, a medical source in the Kurdish Red Crescent said.
A large number of people were also injured by the three car bombs set off by the attackers, the source said.
The attack took place at Abu Fas, near the border of Deir Ezzor and Hasaka provinces, said a war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said earlier that at least 18 people had been killed.
The dead included refugees fleeing the fighting in Deir Ezzor as well as members of the Kurdish Asayish security force, the Observatory reported. Syrian state television said dozens had been killed in the attack.
The jihadist group has lost swathes of its territory in both Syria and Iraq this year and is falling back on the towns and villages of the Euphrates valley southeast of Deir Ezzor.
The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias is pressing it from the north and a rival offensive by the Syrian army, supported by allies including Iran and Russia, is attacking it from the west.
The regime and Russia on Thursday have stepped up its aerial campaign on ISIS-held areas in Deir Ezzor along the Iraqi border, killing 11 people, local media group said.
The attacks targeted the town of Albu Kamal and neighboring villages, leaving 5 people dead, 12 hours after a family of 6 were killed in the eastern countryside in al-Majouda village, according to Furat Post news site.
13 more people, mostly family members, were also killed on Wednesday in Russian airstrikes on Albu Kamal at the border with Iraq, according to media activist Suhaib Jaber.
Also on Wednesday, 35 fleeing people killed in Russian airstrikes on Deir Ezzor.
The strikes hit civilians were trying to cross the Euphrates River aboard rafts from al-Quriya village to al-Tayyaneh village.
Last month, the regime army broke a years-long IS siege of government enclaves in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.
The major offensive on ISIS territories in eastern Syria has left more than 3000 people killed including 955 civilians since September, the deadliest month of the conflict this year, according to the Observatory.
The 955 civilians killed in September included 207 children, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information.
Backed by Russian air power, the army has continued its advance towards Mayadin from Deir Ezzor along the Euphrates valley.
ISIS has lost swathes of territory to the regime and to U.S.-backed Syrian Syrian Democratic Forces that are waging separate campaigns against the extremist group's last major strongholds in Deir Ezzor province.
On Wednesday it said it carried out an attack in the capital Damascus, where three suicide bombers detonated their devices near a police headquarters, killing two people and wounding six.
Aid agencies have warned that the fighting in eastern Syria is the worst in the country this year and that air strikes have caused hundreds of civilian casualties. (With Reuters)
Zaman Al Wasl
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