More than 148 people were killed on Monday in bombings claimed by the ISIS group in northwestern Syria, the deadliest attacks yet in the regime’s coastal heartland.
Seven near-simultaneous explosions targeted bus stations, hospitals and other civilian sites in the seaside cities of Jableh and Tartus, which until now had been relatively insulated from Syria’s five-year civil war.
The unprecedented attacks on strongholds of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime came as IS faces mounting pressure in both Syria and Iraq, where Baghdad’s forces on Monday launched a major offensive to retake the jehadis-held city of Fallujah. A hundred people were killed in Jableh and another 48 in Tartus to the south, at least eight of them children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said they were “without a doubt the deadliest attacks” on the two cities since the start of the war.
ISIS claimed the blasts via its Amaq news agency, saying its fighters had attacked “Alawite gatherings” in Jableh and Tartus, referring to the minority sect from which Assad hails.
ISIS is not known to have a presence in Syria’s coastal provinces, where its jehadis rival and al-Qaeda’s local branch Al-Nusra Front is much more prominent.
But ISIS is notorious for using deadly sleeper cells to attack its enemies. “I’m shocked, this is the first time I hear sounds like this,” said Mohsen Zayyoud, a 22-year-old university student in Jableh.
“I thought the war was over and that I could walk safely. But I was surprised to see that we’re still in the heart of the battle,” he said. In Tartus a 42-year-old bank employee was just as stunned. “It’s the first time we hear explosions in Tartus, and the first time we see dead people or body parts here,” Shady Osman said.
Jableh lies in latakia province, while Tartus is the capital of the adjacent governorate of the same name. Both cities have remained relatively secure even as the war has raged in latakia province’s rural northeast and throughout the country.