• The bus was attacked near a village in a desert area of the province of Deir el-Zour
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack

DAMASCUS: Militants attacked a civilian bus in eastern Syria on Thursday, killing three people and wounding 21, Syrian state TV reported.

The TV said the bus was attacked near a village in a desert area of the province of Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq. It did not say whether the bus was attacked with machine gun fire, a missile or a roadside bomb.

The report gave no further details and there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Large parts of Deir Ezzor were once controlled by the extremist Daesh group, which in 2014 proclaimed a so-called “caliphate” in a third of both Iraq and Syria.

In the past, Syrian authorities have blamed such attacks on Daesh and its sleeper cells, which have been active in eastern and central Syria, despite Daesh militants losing areas they once controlled in 2019.

AP