At least 80 dead in blasts in 2 Syrian strongholds
BEIRUT — A series of coordinated blasts hit bus stations, an electricity plant and a hospital across two Syrian cities Monday, killing at least 80 people in the first major security breach of President Bashar Assad’s coastal strongholds in the country’s five-year civil war.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility on social media.
The seven closely coordinated morning blasts in the pro-government cities of Tartus and Jableh targeted civilians in large numbers and seemed intended to send a message that no part of Syria is safe from violence.
They also underlined the inability of world powers to jump-start Syrian peace talks in Geneva as the violence worsens.
A coalition of nearly 30 rebel factions said Sunday they would give the government 48 hours to end its offensives around besieged opposition-held suburbs of Damascus or they would consider the partial ceasefire brokered in late February “dissolved.” Yet fighting had already resumed in earnest around the country by late April.
The peacefulness of the two coastal cities meant they housed hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people who fled violence from other parts of the country.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported that four explosions struck Jableh. The targets included the emergency entrance of the Jableh National Hospital, it said.
Shortly afterward, suicide bombers followed by an explosives-laden car tore through a packed bus station and a petrol station in Tartus, minutes apart, TV reports and residents said. More than 38 people were killed and many injured in those blasts, Syrian state media reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group based in Britain, put the death toll much higher than Syrian government sources, saying that more than 145 had been killed.
The explosions ripped through both locations almost simultaneously, indicating a high degree of organization.
They sparked a backlash against the displaced, including a reprisal attack on a camp for those internally displaced by war located in Tartus. Parts of one camp were burned down, according to Ghassan Hassan, who heads the Tartous2day media agency.
Some 700,000 refugees from war-torn Aleppo, Idlib and Raqqa are settled in Tartus, Hassan said. Security forces arrested dozens of refugees in sweeps of Jableh and Tartus, the Observatory reported.
The local community of Tartus and Jableh had coexisted relatively well with the tens of thousands of refugees they host.
Russia, which is heavily invested in the Syrian War on behalf of Assad’s government, keeps a naval base in Tartus, the only such base on the Mediterranean. It also has an air base in Latakia province, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) north of Jableh.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said the increase in militant attacks and bombings in Syria “once again demonstrates how fragile the situation in Syria is.”
Putin sent a message to Assad conveying his condolences for the civilian deaths and confirming Russia’s readiness to continue supporting its “Syrian partners.”