DUSHANBE, May 24, 2016, Asia-Plus – International media outlets report that more than 100 people have been killed and around 200 others injured in a series of attacks in Syria.
The Islamic State terrorist group claimed it was responsible after bus stations and a hospital in government-held towns and cities on the coast were targeted.
Syrian state media report that at least one suicide bomber and a car bomb struck at a bus station in Tartous. More than 33 people were killed and many injured, an interior ministry official was quoted as saying.
Syria news agency
Sana
said there were four explosions in Jableh, south of Latakia city. The attacks included three rockets and a suicide bomber at the emergency entrance of the Jableh national hospital, the state media said.
The explosions in the cities of Tartous and Jableh were the first to target civilians in those areas in the course of Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year.
The targets included bus stations and a hospital, and mark an escalation in the conflict as world powers struggle to restart peace talks in Geneva. Several rounds of talks were held in the Swiss city earlier this year, although there was no breakthrough.
Tartous and Jableh are home to thousands of internally displaced people from violence-stricken areas across Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
, an opposition monitoring group based in Britain, put the death toll at more than 100. It said there were four explosions in Jableh, including three suicide bombings and one car bomb, and four in Tartus, including two suicide bombers and one car bomb.
In Jableh, dozens were killed when a car bomb exploded near a bus station, followed by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive belt inside the station.
Meanwhile,
Reuters
reports that bombs killed nearly 150 people and wounded at least 200 in Jableh and Tartous on Syria”s Mediterranean coast on Monday.
The Kremlin said the blasts underscored the need to press ahead with peace talks after the collapse of a February 27 ceasefire in April due to intensifying violence in a war that has killed at least 250,000 people.
“This demonstrates yet again just how fragile the situation in Syria is. And this one more time underscores the need for new urgent steps to continue the negotiating process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his readiness to fight with the Syrian government against “the terrorist threat” and sent his condolences to Assad, the Kremlin said.
