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Homs: Islamic State accused of killing truffle hunters in Syria
[BBC] At least 53 people have been killed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 jihadist hard boy group in Syria, state media reports.

The group were reportedly searching for desert truffles when they were targeted in the province of Homs.

The director of Palmyra hospital said 46 civilians and seven soldiers were killed. The bodies of all victims had gunshot wounds to the head, state news agency SANA reported.

The jihadist group did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) - which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria - said the attack was carried out by jihadists on cycle of violences who opened fire on the truffle hunters.

The group has targeted truffle hunters before in Syria.

Sixteen people, mostly civilians, were killed last Saturday in a similar attack targeting foragers in the same area, the SOHR said.
Update from Rudaw at 2:25 ET:
Five others were injured by shrapnel and are receiving medical treatment.

A survivor told SANA that the militants torched their vehicles at the site of the attack.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 46 civilians are dead and seven ISIS militants, including one officer, were killed in the attack.

The Observatory also reported that in a similar attack on truffle hunters, more than 75 people were kidnapped by ISIS on February 12. Sixteen of them have been executed, including a woman and a member of the Syrian army. The fate of the rest remains unknown.
More from NPA Syria:
The victims were picking truffles in the desert at the time of the sudden attack. “They were brutally murdered, whereas the government forces died during the clash with the ISIS militants,” the source noted.

Lately, the Syrian Desert has been witnessing daily attacks by ISIS sleeper cells against people, government facilities and headquarters, and Iranian military positions despite repeated combing operations by the government forces.

Iranian-backed militias control large areas of the Syrian Desert and the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor, after expulsion of the ISIS from the area in 2017.
Posted by: trailing wife 2023-02-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=658924