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Syria: Isis attacks in and around Sweida city leave dozens dead Surprise Isis attacks leave more than 200 dead in south-west Syria
(about 5 hours later)
Islamic State militants have killed scores of people in a series of attacks on government-held parts of south-western Syria, including suicide blasts in Sweida city, official sources said. More than 200 people have been killed in a brutal surprise offensive by Islamic State in Syria that involved multiple suicide bombings and simultaneous raids in which militants stormed villages and slaughtered civilians.
The seemingly coordinated attacks were the deadliest in government-held territory in many months. At least 50 people were killed and 78 wounded, the head of the Sweida health authority told al-Manar TV, which is run by Damascus’s ally Hezbollah. The attacks on Wednesday targeted the city of Sweida and nearby towns and villages in south-western Syria – areas that before the war were populated mostly by members of the Druze minority sect, and that are nominally under government control but have largely stayed out of the fighting that devastated much of the country over the last seven years.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least 100 people had been killed. Isis said in a statement that it had carried out the attacks. The director of health for the surrounding Sweida province told the pro-government Sham FM that 215 people had been killed in the attack.
The jihadists also launched simultaneous attacks on several villages north-east of Sweida city, where they clashed with government forces, state media and the Observatory said. Earlier, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the death toll had reached at least 156 people, and local journalists said the number was at least 175.
At least two attackers blew themselves up in the city itself, one near a marketplace and a second in another district, state television said. The state news agency SANA said two other Isis militants were killed before they could detonate their bombs. The militants are also believed to have kidnapped dozens of people and taken them back to their hideouts.
The SOHR said jihadists had seized hostages from the villages they attacked. It said that at least 35 civilians were among the dead. Local sources said the attacks began almost simultaneously in the early hours of Wednesday, between 3.50am and 4.30am.
The governor of Sweida, Amer al-Eshi , said the authorities had also arrested another attacker. “The city of Sweida is secure and calm now,” he told state-run Ikhbariyah TV. “They attacked homes in a coordinated attack. They knocked on doors, and then entered the homes and killed people in there,” said Ahed Mrad, a journalist from Sweida. “A lot of victims fell before any bullet was fired because they were going into the homes and slaughtering people silently, at dawn, without anyone being aware.”
Isis was driven from nearly all the territory it once held in Syria last year in separate offensives by the Russian-backed army and a US-backed militia alliance. Isis claimed responsibility for the offensive, which developed into armed clashes with local militiamen. The terror group also launched two suicide attacks on the provincial capital, also called Sweida.
Forces loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, have since gone on to retake the last remaining rebel enclaves near Damascus and Homs, and have swept rebels from the south-west. Syrian state media said government forces killed two suicide bombers before they were able to detonate their vests.
The SOHR said government forces had battled jihadists who stormed the villages from an Isis pocket north-east of the city. Government troops and allied forces hold all of Sweida province except for that enclave. The offensive was one of the deadliest in Sweida and government-controlled areas in recent months. It occurred as the government of Bashar al-Assad continued to wage a campaign in the neighboring province of Daraa to reclaim control over all of southern Syria.
The air force pounded militant hideouts north-east of the city after soldiers also thwarted an attempt by Isis fighters to infiltrate Douma, Tima and al-Matouna villages, state media said. Isis still controls a sliver of territory in Daraa in the Yarmouk river valley, near the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The area has been the target of unrelenting airstrikes over the past few days to force the militants’ surrender.
The army and villagers regained control of a hill and broke a brief siege of another nearby village after clashes, Ikhbariyah said. The fighters who carried out the attacks may have emerged from Isis-controlled territory in Syria’s eastern desert, where more fighters arrived in May from the southern suburbs of Damascus after a government offensive that forced their surrender.
With the help of Russian air power, the Syrian army has been hitting Isis in a separate area further west, near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The militants, who once controlled nearly half of Syria’s landmass in 2015, have seen the territory under their command shrink under concerted campaigns by the US-led coalition and Syrian government forces over the last year. But they still pose a potent danger through isolated attacks and occasional coordinated raids as they continue to conduct an insurgency from their remaining hideouts.
The Yarmouk basin in south-west Syria remains in jihadist hands after an army offensive defeated rebel factions in other parts of the south-west. The operation has focused on Deraa and Quneitra provinces. The SOHR said government forces had battled jihadis who stormed the villages from an Isis pocket north-east of the city. Government troops and allied forces hold all of Sweida province except for that enclave.
The air force pounded militant hideouts north-east of the city, state media said, adding that calm had mostly prevailed in the area, but fears remained that the militants might launch follow-up raids.
The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Syria condemned the attack, saying civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected and spared “the brunt of violence and conflict wherever they are”.
SyriaSyria
Middle East and North AfricaMiddle East and North Africa
Islamic StateIslamic State
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