A Syria war monitor said Tuesday that Islamic State group jihadists in central Homs province killed 54 soldiers who were fleeing as Islamist-led rebels pressed a major offensive on government-controlled areas.
IS jihadists captured "personnel fleeing military service in the desert... during the collapse of the regime" of president Bashar al-Assad and "executed 54" of them in the Sukhna area in Homs province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
IS overran large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a so-called caliphate and launching a reign of terror.
It was defeated territorially in Syria in 2019, but its remnants still carry out deadly attacks, particularly in the vast Badia desert which runs from the outskirts of Damascus to the Iraqi border, mainly targeting government loyalists and Kurdish-led fighters.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, had reported little real resistance from the country's exhausted armed forces in some areas.
US warplanes struck more than 75 IS targets in Syria on Sunday, hitting the group's leaders, operatives and camps, the US military said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that IS would try to use this period in Syria "to reestablish its capabilities, to create safe havens. As our precision strikes over the weekend demonstrate, we are determined not to let that happen".
With AFP
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