Islamic State militants killed about 200 people in a series of attacks on government-held parts of Syria, including multiple suicide blasts, the jihadist group and official sources said.
A picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows a member of the Syrian security forces walking past a truck damaged in a suicide attack in Sweida. Photo: AFP
The coordinated attacks were the deadliest to hit government territory in many months.
Jihadist fighters stormed several villages and staged suicide blasts in Sweida, near one of the few remote pockets still held by Islamic State after it was driven from most of its territory last year.
The head of the Sweida provincial health authority told the pro-Damascus Sham FM that 215 people were killed and 180 injured in the attack, as well as 75 Islamic State fighters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group, said 156 people were killed. Islamic State said in a statement that it had killed more than 100 people in the attacks.
The jihadists launched simultaneous attacks on several villages northeast of Sweida city where they clashed with government forces, state media and the Observatory said.
In the city itself, at least two attackers blew themselves up, one near a marketplace and the second in another district, state television said.
State news agency SANA said two other IS militants were killed before they could detonate their bombs.
The Observatory said jihadists seized hostages from the villages they had attacked.
Photographs distributed on social media, which Reuters could not independently verify but which the Observatory said were genuine, purported to show the bodies of Islamic State fighters hanged from street signs by angry residents.
Sweida Governor Amer al-Eshi said authorities also arrested another attacker.
"The city of Sweida is secure and calm now," he told Ikhbariyah TV.
Islamic State was driven from nearly all the territory it once held in Syria last year in separate offensives by the Russian-backed army and a US-backed militia alliance.
Since then, President Bashar al-Assad has gone on to crush the last remaining rebel enclaves near the cities of Damascus and Homs and swept rebels from the southwest.
After losing its strongholds in eastern Syria last year, Islamic State launched insurgency operations from pockets of territory in desert areas.
The Observatory said government forces battled jihadists who stormed the villages from an Islamic State pocket northeast of the city.
Government troops and allied forces hold all of Sweida province except for that enclave.
The air force pounded militant hideouts northeast of the city after soldiers thwarted an attempt by Islamic State fighters to infiltrate Douma, Tima and al-Matouna villages, state media said.
The army and villagers regained control of a hill and broke a brief siege of another nearby village after clashes, Ikhbariyah said.
With the help of Russian air power, the Syrian army has been hitting Islamic State in a separate pocket further west, near the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Yarmouk Basin in southwest Syria remains in jihadist hands, after an army offensive defeated rebel factions in other parts of the southwest. The operation has focused on Deraa and Quneitra provinces.
- Reuters
