Scores killed as bombs hit Syrian government 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 war.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on social media. The militants are not known to maintain a presence in the surrounding countryside, an area in which mainstream rebels and al-Qaida affiliated insurgents form the predominant opposition to Assad’s forces.
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 worrying inability of world powers to jumpstart 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 — and who are now coming under suspicion by shellshocked long-term residents and government security forces.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported that four explosions struck Jableh, the result of three suicide attacks and a car bomb. The targets included the emergency entrance of the Jableh National Hospital, it said.
Shortly afterward, suicide bombers followed by an explosives-laded 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.