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The group of Islamic states killed at least 68 US-backed fighters who were trying to drive the jihadists out of Hajin, their center in eastern Syria, a war watcher said Saturday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that the IS had sent suicide bombers Friday night as part of a counterattack against the Syrian Democratic Forces, thus killing 41 people the previous balance sheet.
The SDF fighters, backed by airstrikes from the coalition led by the US coalition, were killed overnight, the UK-based Observatory announced.
"The death toll has increased because of the discovery of new casualties on the front line and the existence of 100 wounded," said Observatory President Rami Abdel Rahman.
A spokesman for the US-led coalition said that "at the moment, the numbers can not be confirmed because both sides are suffering losses while this difficult fight .. . keep on going".
A "sandstorm allowed a counterattack of the Islamic State, which was surprising given the conditions, but now, the air is clear, the coalition will continue to increase air and military support for help our partners, "said spokesman Sean Ryan, using an alternate acronym for IS.
In a statement released on the Telegram messaging app, the IS said it had attacked the village of Sousa on Friday night and detonated a car bomb near the village of Al-Baghuza , further south, along the Euphrates.
The SDF launched last month an offensive against jihadists in the Hajin pocket on the eastern shores of the Euphrates, in the province of Deir Ezzor.
The IS has organized a bloody riposte.
Since September 10, 270 SDF fighters and 496 Islamic State jihadists have been killed during the offensive, the Observatory said.
The coalition estimates that there are still 2,000 ISIS fighters in the Hajin region.
The Observatory said last week that coalition air strikes killed 41 civilians in Sousa, including 10 children, on October 18 and 19.
But the coalition said it targeted an IS command post on 18 October and denied carrying out strikes in the area the next day.
ISIS invaded vast expanses of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a "caliphate" over the lands it controlled.
But the jihadist group has since lost most of this territory because of various offensives in both countries.
In Syria, its presence has been reduced to parts of the vast Badia desert and the Hajin pocket near the Iraqi border.
More than 360,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the war in Syria with the brutal repression of anti-government demonstrations.
Members of the People 's Protection Units (YPG), part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), met in eastern Syria on 11 September 2018.
