Five bomb attacks, claimed by ISIS, kill 40 people in Syria

A series of explosions struck government-held areas of Syria on Monday, state media and a monitor reported.

“Those attacks are simultaneous and are definitely coordinated”, he said. Conflicting casualty figures are common in the Syria war.

Monday’s bombings came in rapid succession during the morning rush hour, targeting the central city of Homs; a highly guarded Damascus suburb; the government stronghold of Tartus, where Russian Federation has a major naval base; and Kurdish areas in northeastern Syria.

“It’s an area that houses officers and their families”.

Russian Federation and the U.S. have been striving for weeks to secure a ceasefire between Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and moderate rebels that would expand access for hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire.

A auto bomb struck a bridge on the global coastal highway leading to the government stronghold of Tartus.

Syria’s official Sana news agency reported that 30 civilians had been killed and 45 others injured in the Tartous countryside. The report said the Tartus-Homs highway was closed briefly.

The latest carnage came in a wave of blasts, the deadliest of which was a double bombing in the coastal province of Tartus, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The blasts killed at least 48 people and wounded dozens a day after IS lost the last stretch of the Syria-Turkey border under its control.

Tartous Governor Safwan Abu Sa’adi visited the people injured in the terrorist bombings who are receiving treatment at al-Bassel Hospital in Tartous, and later he inspected the sites of the bombings, witnessing the damage caused to the sites and the work being done by civil defense and other sides to remove burnt cars, fallen trees, dust, and other debris caused by the attack.

The Islamic State group said it was behind the attacks.

And state media also reported a vehicle bomb at the entrance to the Al-Zahra neighbourhood in Homs, which is controlled by the government. The effort was complicated Sunday by fresh gains by government forces that entirely cut off the rebel-controlled portion of the city, leaving an estimated 300,000 civilians without access to the outside world. Their capture of the complex broke a month-long siege of rebel-held east Aleppo, a siege that is resuming as the government forces reassert control of the area. The Observatory said four soldiers were killed.

An Islamic State attacker on a motorcycle blew himself up in the northeastern city of Hasakeh, killing eight, SANA said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitoring group, said the blast hit a checkpoint belonging to the Kurdish Asayesh security forces.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the dead in both the Homs and Al-Sabura road attacks were government security forces manning checkpoints. Turkey began an operation inside Syria on Aug 24, targeting both IS but also Syrian Kurdish forces that have been a key USA partner in the fight against the jihadist group in Syria.