20 people killed, 30 others injured in Daesh car bomb in eastern Syria


A Daesh car bomb killed at least 26 people and injured 30 others at a site where displaced families are located in eastern Syria near the city of Deir el-Zour, Syria's SANA regime news agency reported on Friday.

It said the bombing took place near the al-Jafra area, which is located south of the city and is controlled by the Assad regime.

The Britain-based Observatory said 12 children were among the victims of the attack on a gathering at a checkpoint run by U.S.-backed fighters, where the terrorists are losing ground to two separate offensives aimed at ousting Daesh from Syria.

"Dozens of people were wounded, and the death toll could rise because of the number of serious injuries," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman

The displaced people had been on their way to neighboring Hasakeh province, where camps have been set up to house them in Kurdish-controlled territory, Abdel Rahman said.

Daesh controls roughly one quarter of oil-rich Deir el-Zour province but is battling for survival on two fronts.

One offensive against Daesh is by the Assad regime regime forces backed by Russian air power, while the second is by a U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is dominated by the PKK terrorist group's Syrian wing the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing People's Protection Forces (YPG).

Daesh terrorists are now cornered in part of Deir el-Zour province around the border town of Albu Kamal on the frontier with Iraq, and many civilians have been trying to flee the affected areas.

The terrorist group seized large areas of both Syria and Iraq in a lightning 2014 campaign.