At least 53 people were killed on Friday in an attack attributed to the Islamic State (IS) group in a desert region in central Syria, the deadliest in more than a year, AFP writes.

The jihadist group has stepped up its attacks in recent months despite the loss of its fiefdoms in Syria and strikes by the international anti-jihadist coalition, which said on Friday it had killed one of its leaders in a raid that killed four US soldiers. wounded.

According to Syrian state television, “53 civilians who were collecting truffles were killed in an attack by ISIS terrorists (abbreviation of IS in Arabic) southeast of the city of Sohne, in the east of Homs province.”

The director of the hospital in Palmyra, Walid Audi, where the bodies of the dead were taken, said that seven Syrian soldiers were among the dead, Syrian pro-government radio Cham FM reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSHO), a British NGO with a wide network of sources in Syria, provided the first figures of 36 killed. Later, he specified that seven military personnel were among the injured.

The attack comes days after a similar attack in the same region left 16 people dead, OSDO said.

The victims were also collecting truffles last week, according to the same source, which said that approximately 60 people were kidnapped in this first attack.

According to OSDO, the jihadists are taking advantage of the fact that residents of remote rural areas go into the desert to collect truffles and thus attack them.

The desert truffle or sand truffle is usually harvested between February and April and sold at golden prices.

According to OSDO, the attackers were on motorcycles when they opened fire on the victims on Friday.

Earlier, ISIS freed 25 people out of more than sixty people the group kidnapped last week, the NGO said.

The attack is the deadliest by the jihadist group in more than a year after it attacked a prison in the country’s northeast, in a region controlled by Kurdish forces. According to OSDO, the attack killed 373 people, including 268 jihadists, after several days of intense fighting.

After sweeping to power in Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014 and conquering vast swaths of territory, IS has seen its self-proclaimed “caliphate” collapse in successive offensives. In 2017, jihadists were defeated in Iraq and in 2019 in Syria.

But the extremist group responsible for numerous abuses continues to carry out attacks in the two countries despite raids by the anti-jihadist coalition.