IS kills dozens in suicide attacks in southern Syria

Beirut: A string of Islamic State group suicide attacks in southern Syria has killed at least 40 people, mostly pro-regime fighters, in one of the militants’ deadliest assaults in months, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 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.

“Three bombers with explosive belts targeted Sweida city alone, while the other blasts hit villages to the north and east,” the Observatory said yesterday. Later on, a fourth suicide attack hit the city.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Observatory, said the militants then followed up with further attacks, seizing three of the seven villages they had targeted.

He said 26 pro-government fighters had been killed and more than 30 people wounded in the assault on populated areas close to Sweida city.

Syria’s official news agency Sana confirmed the attacks had killed and wounded people in the provincial capital.

State television also reported casualties in villages to the north and east, adding that the army was targeting IS positions in Sweida province’s eastern countryside.

Abdel Rahman said unidentified warplanes were also targeting IS fighters in the area.

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.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad has in recent weeks ousted rebels from a majority of the country’s south, part of which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

His forces are now closing in on a patch of territory in nearby Daraa province held by militant group Jaish Khaled bin al-Walid, which has pledged allegiance to IS.

The group, which has around 1,000 fighters in the region, has been the target of an intense campaign of bombing by Russian and Syrian jets in recent days.

Sana said the attacks in Sweida “aimed at diminishing the military pressure... on IS remnants facing their inevitable end in the western Daraa countryside”.