BEIRUT: Sixteen people, among them 10 children, were killed in a government air raid in east Syria on Wednesday, a monitor said, but state media blamed the deaths on militants.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said an airstrike hit a bus on the road between eastern Deir Ezzor province and Damascus as it passed through the Shula area.

The group said most of the children were under the age of 10.

But state TV said that the Islamic State group had killed the passengers, putting the death toll at 13 without specifying how they were killed.

The civilians on the bus were the latest victims in Syria’s civil war, which is now in its fourth year and which has killed more than 190,000 people, according to the UN.