More than 220 dead in Daesh attacks on southern Syria

BEIRUT — A string of suicide blasts and raids claimed by Daesh killed more than 220 people in southern Syria on Wednesday, in one of the militant group’s deadliest ever assaults in the country.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacks hit several areas of the largely government-held southern province of Sweida, where Daesh retains a presence in a northeastern desert region.

They came almost a week into a deadly Russia-backed regime campaign to oust Daesh militants from a holdout in a neighbouring province of the country’s south.

Deash claimed responsibility for the violence, saying “soldiers of the caliphate” attacked Syrian government positions and security outposts in Sweida city, then detonated their explosive belts. 

The Britain-based observatory said three suicide attackers set off booby-trapped belts in Sweida city, as other blasts hit villages to the north and east. A fourth suicide explosion hit the city later.

“[Daesh] militants then stormed villages in the province’s northeast and killed residents in their homes,” observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The suicide blasts and raids killed at least 220 people, including 127 civilians, the observatory said.

The remaining 94 dead were pro-regime fighters, most of whom where residents who had picked up weapons to defend their villages, it said.

Sweida, whose residents are mostly from the Druze minority, has been relatively insulated from the war that has ravaged the rest of the country since 2011.

“It’s the bloodiest death toll in Sweida province since the start of the war” in 2011 and one of the deadliest ever in Syria, Abdel Rahman said.

The violence also left 38 Daesh militants dead, including the suicide attackers. 

The militants captured at least three of the seven villages they targeted but clashes were ongoing Wednesday, the observatory said. 

Abandoned shoes 

State media confirmed the attacks had killed and wounded people in Sweida city and villages to the north and east, but did not give a specific toll.

SANA published images of the attack’s aftermath in Sweida city, showing the remains of a victim sprawled on a staircase near a damaged wall. 

Abandoned shoes lay in the middle of the road among fruit that had spilled out of cartons.

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Syria Ali Al Zaatari condemned the “terrorist bombing in Sweida city today”, saying all civilians should be protected. 

And the Russian foreign ministry said the Daesh attacks “confirm the need for energetic and coordinated efforts by the international community to eradicate this universal evil from Syrian territory”.

State television said the army was targeting Daesh in the province’s east. 

Despite pro-government forces ousting the group from urban centres in eastern Syria last year, surprise Daesh raids in recent months have killed dozens of regime and allied fighters.

The militants still hold some territory in Syria’s south, including in Sweida and another isolated but larger patch in neighbouring Daraa province, to the west.

That pocket is held by Jaish Khaled Bin Al Walid, a militant faction whose 1,000 fighters have pledged allegiance to Daesh.

After ousting non-extremist rebels from most of the country’s south, President Bashar Assad’s troops and his Russian allies are now closing in on the Daesh pocket in Daraa province.

SANA said the Daesh attacks on neighbouring Sweida were an attempt to relieve pressure “on Daesh remnants facing their inevitable end in the western Daraa countryside”.

Desert holdouts 

On Wednesday, Russia-backed regime forces pressed their heavy bombardment of the Daesh-held pocket in Daraa.

At least 41 civilians have been killed in air strikes on the militant holdout since July 19, the monitor says.

Fierce clashes between the two sides have killed 49 regime fighters and 67 militants.

Syria’s south is ostensibly protected from fighting by an internationally brokered ceasefire since last year, but violence has dramatically risen in recent weeks.

Last month, Assad launched a lightning assault that battered rebel areas in the south and brought most of Daraa province under his control. 

He then moved onto Quneitra, the neighbouring province which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. 

On Tuesday, a Syrian military source accused Israel of firing at one of its warplanes as it carried out operations against militants in Quneitra.

Israeli occupational forces earlier said it they shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had infiltrated Israeli airspace, risking another escalation around the sensitive buffer zone.

The Damascus regime has long accused Israel of backing Daesh and other anti-government factions.

Daesh overran large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, but has since lost most of that territory. More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria’s war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.