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Explosions hit Syrian coastal cities Explosions kill scores of people in Assad strongholds on Syrian coast
(35 minutes later)
Multiple explosions have hit the Syrian coastal cities of Jableh and Tartous, killing more than 100 people in an area that had previously escaped the worst of the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said. Bomb blasts have killed more than 100 people in the Syrian coastal cities of Jableh and Tartous, monitors said, in a government-controlled area that hosts Russian forces.
The UK-based monitor also said that at least two of the blasts were suicide bombs. It put the total number of explosions at seven – four in Jableh, in Latakia province, and three in Tartous province’s capital farther south. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Mediterranean cities, which have up to now escaped the worst of the conflict, saying it was targeting supporters of President Bashar al-Assad.
The state-run Ikhbariya news channel broadcast what it said were scenes of one of the blasts in Jableh, showing several burned-out cars and minivans. Scores were wounded in at least five suicide attacks and two car bombs, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said – the first assaults of their kind in Tartous, where government ally Russia maintains a naval facility, and Jableh.
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Ikhbariya reported that three explosions hit Jableh. It described the blasts as terrorist attacks. State media confirmed the attacks but gave a lower death toll.
State TV said one blast in Jableh took place near the government hospital. Fighting has increased in other parts of Syria in recent weeks as world powers struggle to revive a threadbare ceasefire in western Syria and after peace talks in Geneva this year broke down.
It said one of the Tartous explosions was a car bomb, and that another was from a suicide bomber. The blasts hit a residential area, it said. State media reported that a car bomb and two suicide bombers attacked a petrol station in Tartous. In Jableh, one of the four blasts hit near a hospital, state media and the Observatory reported.
Footage broadcast by the state-run Ikhbariya news channel of what it said were scenes of the blasts in Jableh showed several twisted and incinerated cars and minivans. Pictures circulated by pro-Damascus social media users showed dead bodies in the back of pick-up vans and charred body parts on the ground.
The Syrian Observatory said at least 53 people were killed in Jableh, and 48 in Tartous.
The interior ministry said in a statement more than 20 people had been killed, and one state media outlet put the death toll at 45 people.
Bombings in the capital Damascus and western city Homs earlier this year killed scores and were claimed by Isis, which is fighting against government forces and their allies in some areas, and separately against its jihadi rival al-Qaida and other insurgent groups.
Russia, which intervened in the Syrian war in support of Assad last September, operates an air base at Hmeymim in Latakia and a naval facility at Tartous.
Latakia city, which is north of Jableh and capital of the province that is Assad’s heartland, has been targeted on a number of occasions by bombings and insurgent rocket attacks.