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 Forces Surround Lebanon’s Khiam Ahead of Storming it

Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)
Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)
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Israeli Forces Surround Lebanon’s Khiam Ahead of Storming it

Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)
Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)

Israeli forces have blocked supply routes to the southern Lebanese border city of al-Khiam ahead of storming it.

They have also surrounded the strategic city with Hezbollah fighters still inside, launching artillery and air attacks against them.

Hezbollah fighters have been holding out in Khiam for 25 days. The capture of the city would be significant and allow Israeli forces easier passage into southern Lebanon.

Field sources said Israeli forces have already entered some neighborhoods of Khiam from its eastern and southern outskirts, expanding their incursion into its northern and eastern sectors to fully capture the city.

They cast doubt on claims that the city has been fully captured, saying fighting is still taking place deeper inside its streets and alleys, citing the ongoing artillery fire and drone and air raids.

Israel has already cut off Hezbollah’s supply routes by seizing control of Bourj al-Mamlouk, Tall al-Nahas and olive groves in al-Qlaa in the Marayoun region. Its forces have also fanned out to the west towards the Litani River.

The troops have set up a “line of fire” spanning at least seven kms around Khiam to deter anti-tank attacks from Hezbollah and to launch artillery, drone and aerial attacks, said the sources.

The intense pressure has forced Hezbollah to resort to suicide drone attacks against Israeli forces.

Hezbollah’s al-Manar television said Israeli forces tried to carry out a new incursion towards Khiam’s northern neighborhoods.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that since Friday night, Israeli forces have been using “all forms of weapons in their attempt to capture Khiam, which Israel views as a strategic gateway through which it can make rapid ground advances.”

It reported an increase in air and artillery attacks in the past two days as the forces try to storm the city.

The troops are trying to advance on Khiam by first surrounding it from all sides under air cover, it continued.

They are also booby-trapping some homes and buildings and then destroying them, similar to what they have done in other southern towns, such as Adeisseh, Yaround, Aitaroun and Mais al-Jabal.

Khiam holds symbolic significance to the Lebanese people because it was the first city liberated following Israel’s implementation of United Nations Security Council 425 on May 25, 2000, that led to its withdrawal from the South in a day that Hezbollah has since declared Liberation Day.