Nearly 100 killed in Islamic State attacks in southern Syria

Islamic State militants killed nearly 100 people in a series of attacks on government-held parts of southwestern Syria on Wednesday, including multiple suicide blasts in Sweida city.

The co-ordinated attacks were the deadliest to hit government territory in many months. Some 96 people were killed and 176 wounded in total, the head of the Sweida health authority told the pro-Damascus Sham FM radio.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said 156 people were killed. Islamic State said in a statement that it had killed more than 100 people in the attacks.

Northeast of Sweida city, the terror group launched simultaneous attacks on several villages it clashed with government forces, state media and the observatory said.

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In the city itself, at least two attackers blew themselves up, one near a marketplace and the second in another district, state television said. Syrian state news agency Sana said two other Islamic State militants were killed before they could detonate their bombs.

The observatory said jihadists seized hostages from the villages they had attacked. It said the dead included at least 41 civilians.

Sweida Governor Amer al-Eshi said authorities also arrested another attacker. “The city of Sweida is secure and calm now,” he told state-run Ikhbariyah TV.

Islamic State, also known as 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.

Since then, President Bashar al-Assad has gone on to crush the last remaining rebel enclaves near the cities of Damascus and Homs and swept rebels from the southwest.

Militant hideouts

After losing its strongholds in eastern Syria last year, Islamic State launched insurgency operations from pockets of territory in desert areas. The observatory said government forces battled jihadists who stormed the villages from an Islamic State pocket northeast of the city.

Government troops and allied forces hold all of Sweida province except for that enclave.

The air force pounded militant hideouts northeast of the city after soldiers thwarted an attempt by Islamic State fighters to infiltrate Douma, Tima and al-Matouna villages, state media said.

The army and villagers regained control of a hill and broke a brief siege of another nearby village after clashes, Ikhbariyah said.

With the help of Russian air power, the Syrian army has been hitting Islamic State in a separate pocket further west, near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The Yarmouk Basin in southwest Syria remains in jihadist hands, after an army offensive defeated rebel factions in other parts of the southwest. The operation has focused on Deraa and Quneitra provinces. – Reuters