BEIRUT: An attack in eastern Syria killed 12 oil field workers, a war monitor said on Friday, a day after Syrian Kurdish-led forces announced an offensive against militants.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which draws on extensive sources inside Syria, gave the toll of 12 dead in the assault near an oil field west of Deir Ezzor.

It blamed cells linked to the militant Islamic State (IS) group. The militants have previously carried out attacks in the area, and a similar deadly assault took place last year.

Syria’s state news agency SANA gave a toll of 10 dead in the “terrorist attack that targeted three buses transporting workers” from al Taim oil field, which is under Syrian government control.

Despite the defeat of its “caliphate” in Syria by US-backed Kurdish forces nearly four years ago, IS continues to claim attacks in Syria and across the border in Iraq.

“The attack began with explosive devices that went off as the buses drove by, and then the group’s militants shot at them,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

On Thursday the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they had begun an offensive against IS, following a recent assault on a prison in Raqa, northwest of the attack on the bus.

The SDF, which regularly launches operations against the jihadists, said its latest offensive aimed to eliminate IS from areas that had been “the source of the recent terrorist attacks”.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2022