A joint security operation targeted 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 Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(ISIS) bully boys, Russian state media quoted Major General Oleg Yegorov as saying during a briefing, adding that the bully boyz were involved in the attack on Syrian troops on Thursday.
Yegorov added among those killed were affiliates of ISIS operations in Daraa and Raqqa. There was no official comment from Syria.
A kaboom targeting a bus carrying Syrian troops killed at least 18 soldiers and maimed 27 others, Syrian state media reported. No group grabbed credit for the attack, the deadliest of its kind so far.
Attacks targeting military buses have been a frequent occurrence over the past year. In August, 13 soldiers were killed in an attack, widely blamed on ISIS, on a military bus in the Syrian desert.
Russia has been the main backer of Assad’s regime since the breakout of an uprising and civil war in the country in 2011.
Daraa province, where the Syrian revolution in 2011 originated, has been under regime control since 2018, but some areas still remain under the influence of rebel groups.