More than 220 killed in IS suicide blasts and raids in Southern Syria

Beirut : A string of suicide blasts and raids claimed by the IS (Daesh) group killed more than 220 people in Southern Syria yesterday, in one of the militants’ deadliest ever assaults in the country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacks hit several areas of the largely government-held southern province of Sweida, where Daesh retains a presence in a northeastern desert region.

They came almost a week into a deadly Russia-backed regime campaign to oust Daesh fighters from a holdout in a neighboring province of the country’s south. Daesh claimed responsibility for the violence, saying “soldiers of the caliphate” attacked Syrian government positions and security outposts in Sweida city, then detonated their explosive belts.

The Britain-based Observatory said three suicide attackers set off booby-trapped belts in Sweida city, as other blasts hit villages to the north and east. A fourth suicide explosion hit the city later. The suicide blasts and raids killed around 220 people including around 100 civilians, the Observatory said. The remaining dead were pro-regime fighters, most of whom where residents who had picked up weapons to defend their villages, it said.

Sweida, whose residents are mostly from the Druze minority, has been relatively insulated from the war that has ravaged the rest of the country since 2011. “It’s the bloodiest death toll in Sweida province since the start of the war” in 2011 and one of the deadliest ever in Syria, Abdel Rahman said.