At least a dozen oil field employees have been killed and two others wounded in an attack on their convoy in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, the official SANA news agency confirmed Friday.
The attack targeted three buses carrying workers of the Al Taym oilfield, where the Al Furat company operates, for which the Syrian state is the main responsible, and would have started with the detonation of an explosive device, followed by a shooting assault, according to sources of the NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which put the death toll at 12.
The Syrian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Basam Tohme, has blamed the attack on «mercenaries and terrorist groups» in the pay of «the US occupation», but the NGO assures that the attack is the work of the jihadist group Islamic State and coincides with, it warns, an increase in the activity of the terrorist organization in the country.
The NGO, based in London but with sources on Syrian territory, estimates that Islamic State has killed a total of 611 people across the country in 2022, either in territories under the control of the Syrian government or Kurdish militias, amid an increase in its activity, five years after its territorial defeat and the dissolution of its «Syrian caliphate» at the end of 2017.
«The presence of Islamic State in Syria,» the NGO warns, «continues to be notable, something that is noticeable in the increase in the number of its operations, while exploiting every possible opportunity to sow chaos and perpetrate attacks, in a clear statement that the organization is here to stay.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
