JEDDAH: At least 11 Assad regime fighters and two civilians were shot dead on Monday when Daesh terrorists ambushed a bus in eastern Syria. The attack took place on a remote road between the regime-controlled city of Homs and Raqqa, which is now under Kurdish administration but was the capital of Daesh’s short-lived “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain but has monitors on the ground in Syria, said the ambush had been carried out by Daesh sleeper cells that launch hit-and-run attacks in the desert areas. Daesh later admitted its fighters killed 13 people on the bus before burning it. Syria’s 11-year-old conflict has carved the country into various zones of control, with regime troops and allied fighters controlling the most territory. A patch of northwestern territory is held by Turkish-backed rebels and more hard-line groups, while Kurdish-led forces with US backing hold the northeast. Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said it was the deadliest such attack since one in early March in the Palmyra region that killed 15 people. Another bus ambush took place in December 2020, when 28 people were killed in an attack on a main highway in the eastern Deir Ezzor province. In January this year, there was a breakout attempt at a prison housing Daesh detainees after the took over the building. Their attempts were thwarted by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, assisted by US troops. Analysts have long feared a resurgence of Daesh but it still has no fixed positions and the intensity of its attacks is largely unchanged since 2019. US special forces from the anti-Daesh coalition captured the group’s top bomb maker in a helicopter raid last week in northern Syria.