Syria’s south erupts

Islamic State ambushes spark brutal fighting across Sweida

ISLAMIC State fighters ambushed a city and several villages in southern Syria on Wednesday, triggering ferocious clashes between residents and the militants that provincial health officials said killed more than 200 people.

The co-ordinated attacks across the province of Sweida, which included several suicide bombings, shattered the calm of a region that has been largely insulated from the worst of the violence of Syria’s sevenyear civil war.

The suicide bomb blasts inside the provincial capital, also called Sweida, were apparently timed to coincide with attacks on villages in the eastern countryside, creating mayhem across the province.

The attacks triggered deadly clashes between pro-government fighters and residents who picked up weapons to defend their home towns on one side and IS militants on the other.

By nightfall, the province’s health directorate had recorded 204 civilians killed and 180 wounded, according to local official Hassan Omar, making it the single bloodiest day for the province since the 2011 national revolt that sparked the ongoing civil war.

Sultan Bou Ammar, a resident of the village of Shbiki, said some residents unwittingly opened their doors when militants knocked early on Thursday morning, so unexpected was the attack.

“They kidnapped more than 40 people, all of them women or children,” said Mr Bou Ammar.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said at least 183 people were killed, including 94 residents who were part of local defence militias that have the backing of the Syrian government.

At least 45 IS militants were killed in the fighting.

The rare attacks in Sweida, populated mainly by Syria’s minority Druze, came amid a government offensive elsewhere in the country’s south.