At least 156 dead in Syria after wave of Islamic State suicide bombings
Despite pro-government forces ousting the group from urban centres in eastern Syria last year, surprise IS raids in recent months have killed dozens of regime and allied fighters
Raids and suicide bombings carried out by Islamic State (IS) in Syria’s southern Sweida province have killed 156 people, including 62 civilians, a war monitor said on Wednesday.
Most of them were killed in raids on villages in the northeast of the province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The others were killed in suicide attacks in the provincial capital, the monitor said, updating earlier tolls.
The blasts hit several areas of the largely government-held southern province of Sweida, where IS retains a presence in a northeastern desert region.
The attacks came almost a week into a deadly Russia-backed regime campaign to oust IS fighters from a holdout in a neighbouring province of the country’s south.
The raids began when three suicide attackers detonated their explosive belts in Sweida city as other blasts hit villages to the north and east, said the Observatory. A fourth suicide blast hit the city later.
“IS fighters then stormed villages in the province’s northeast and killed residents in their homes,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory.