ISIS Militants Kill at Least 18 People in an Attack on Villagers Collecting Truffles in Eastern Syria

 A Syrian vendor displays truffles at a market in Aleppo on February 28, 2024. (AFP)
A Syrian vendor displays truffles at a market in Aleppo on February 28, 2024. (AFP)
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ISIS Militants Kill at Least 18 People in an Attack on Villagers Collecting Truffles in Eastern Syria

 A Syrian vendor displays truffles at a market in Aleppo on February 28, 2024. (AFP)
A Syrian vendor displays truffles at a market in Aleppo on February 28, 2024. (AFP)

ISIS militants attacked villagers collecting truffles in eastern Syria on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people and leaving dozens injured and missing, opposition activists and pro-government media said.

The attack against the truffle hunters was one of the deadliest strikes by the ISIS group in the area in more than a year. It took place in a desert area near the town of Kobajeb in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor that borders Iraq. Some of the truffle gatherers may have been kidnapped, opposition activists said.

Despite the militant group’s defeat in Syria in March 2019, ISIS sleeper cells still carry deadly attacks in Syria and neighboring Iraq, across a wide swath of territory where the extremists had once ruled.

Since truffle hunters work in large groups in remote areas, ISIS militants in previous years have repeatedly preyed on them, emerging from the desert to kill many and abduct others to be ransomed for money.

Separately, in Syria's opposition-held northwest, an al-Qaeda-linked group released more than 400 detainees from its jails after days of protests demanding their freedom.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said that the attack Wednesday in Deir Ezzor left 18 people dead and 16 wounded. It said about 50 people were missing and might have been kidnapped by ISIS. Twelve vehicles were torched.

The Observatory said the dead included four members of the pro-government National Defense Forces, which had sent reinforcements to the area.

The pro-government Dama Post media outlet said the death toll was as high as 44 and that some 13 vehicles used by the truffle farmers were set fire to and destroyed.

The disparate casualty figures could not be immediately reconciled. Different death tolls in Syria are not uncommon in the immediate aftermath of deadly attacks.

The truffles are a seasonal delicacy that can be sold for a high price and many in Syria, where 90% of the population lives below the poverty line, go out to collect them.

In February 2023, ISIS militants killed dozens of civilians and security officers in an attack on truffle hunters in the deserts of central Syria.

In Syria's Idlib province, the recent death of a member of an opposition faction, allegedly while being tortured in a jail run by the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, has sparked days of protests in various parts of the province.

Protesters have demanded the release of prisoners, including during a rally Tuesday night at an HTS jail in the town of Daret Azzeh that drew warning gunfire from HTS fighters, further angering protesters. The protesters also have demanded the resignation of HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Golani.

Golani responded with concessions, including the release Wednesday of 420 detainees from HTS jails, according to several opposition activists, including the Observatory.

Anti-HTS sentiments had been rising since a wave of arrests by the group of senior officials within the organization, which was previously known as Nusra Front before changing its name several times and distancing itself from al-Qaeda.

In August, the group announced that its co-founder and top official Maysara al-Jubouri, better known as Abu Maria al-Qahtani, was arrested over misuse of social media. Al-Jubouri, an Iraqi citizen, had been a longtime al-Qaeda official who fought against US forces in Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In 2011, he was one of several al-Qaeda officials who moved to Syria, months after the country’s ongoing deadly conflict began. There have been reports that al-Jubouri will be released soon.

In the weeks that followed al-Jubouri’s arrest, dozens of HTS officials and members of other factions allied with them were detained and allegedly tortured in jails run by al-Golani loyalists for allegedly giving intelligence information to the US-led coalition that has, over the years, killed top al-Qaeda commanders in drone strikes in different parts of Syria.



Israeli Army Orders Gaza City Suburb Evacuated, Spurring New Displacement Wave

A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Israeli Army Orders Gaza City Suburb Evacuated, Spurring New Displacement Wave

A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaia suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
"For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south," the military's post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas' armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday's early hours, residents and Palestinian media said - the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.
HOSPITAL DIRECTOR WOUNDED BY GUNFIRE
In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating against regrouping Hamas militants since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
"This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost," Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
"We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us...," he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns - Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun - said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.
Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave's 2.3 million population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.
The war erupted in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 in which gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.