At least 30 Syrian soldiers were killed Wednesday in an attack by the jihadist Islamic State group on their bus in the east of the war-torn country, a monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack in Deir Ezzor province targeted a bus carrying regime soldiers going home on leave.
"It was one of the deadliest attacks since the fall of the IS (self-proclaimed) caliphate" last year, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The official news agency SANA reported that a "terrorist attack" on a bus killed "25 citizens" and wounded 13.
Abdel Rahman said the bus was ambushed near the village of Shula by jihadists who detonated bombs before opening fire.
Two other buses which were part of the convoy managed to escape, the war monitor said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
IS overran large parts of Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a cross-border "caliphate" in 2014, before multiple offensives in the two countries led to its territorial defeat.
The group was defeated in Syria in March last year but sleeper cells continue to launch attacks namely in Syria's vast desert that stretches from the central province of Homs to Deir Ezzor and the border with Iraq.
In April, 27 fighters loyal to the Damascus government and allied Iran-backed militiamen were killed in an IS attack near the desert city of Al-Sukhna.
The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people since it started in 2011, the Observatory says.
The dead include more than 130,500 pro-government fighters, among them foreigners.
