Reports: Militants kill 26 people in Syrian countryside

By AHMAD EL-KHATIB

BEIRUT (AP) — Reports say Islamic State militants have killed 26 people who were foraging for wild truffles in Syria’s Hama region. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition media group based in Britain, said civilians and military personnel were among the victims of the armed attack in the eastern outskirts of the city of Hama, 115 miles (186 kilometers) north of the capital Damascus. Syria’s state news agency said that the attack was carried out by members of the Islamic State group. Despite their defeat in Syria in March 2019, the militant group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks both in Syria and Iraq where they once held territories and declared a “caliphate.”