IS kills nine pro-regime fighters in east Syria, says SOHR

The Islamic State (IS) group has killed nine pro-regime fighters in one day in eastern Syria, a war monitor said on Thursday, the latest in a spate of attacks in the area.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring organisation with a wide network of sources on the ground, the nine were among 30 Syrian regime soldiers and allied fighters killed in IS attacks this week alone.

The "fierce clashes" since Wednesday between regime forces and IS in a remote area of Raqqa province, in the country's east, also killed seven jihadist fighters, the Observatory said.

The fighting followed an ambush, claimed by IS, against a bus carrying fighters from the regular regime army and allied militia on the desert road linking the cities of Raqqa and Homs.

Monday's attack, one of the deadliest of its kind this year, left at least 15 dead according to the Observatory.

The monitor also said that on Wednesday, another four regime soldiers were killed in an IS ambush near Dumayr military airport, east of the capital Damascus, and that two more were killed earlier this week in the Raqqa region.

IS's once sprawling self-proclaimed "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria was defeated in March 2019 by US-backed local forces. It has not held fixed positions since then.

But it has continued to carry out guerrilla-style attacks against regime and Kurdish-led forces in eastern Syria, as well as against government and allied troops in Iraq.