JABLEH, SYRIA (Reuters) — Bomb blasts killed nearly 150 people and wounded at least 200 in Jableh and Tartous on Syria’s Mediterranean coast on Monday (May 23) in the government-controlled territory that hosts Russian military bases, monitors and state media said.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in the cities that have up to now escaped the worst of the violence. It said it was targeting members of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 148 people were killed in attacks by at least five suicide bombers and two devices planted in cars. State media had said 78 people had been killed in what is Assad’s coastal heartland.
One of the four blasts in Jableh happened at a bus station and another at a hospital, the Observatory and state media said.
Footage broadcast on local media showed several twisted and burnt-out cars and minivans.
Islamic State claimed the attacks in a statement posted online by the group’s Amaq news agency, saying its fighters had targeted “gatherings of Alawites”.
At the hospital a Syrian, Bassen Al Hassan, who helped the injured get medical attention said the blast happened when a girl entered the emergency area and blew herself up.
“We went to help the injured. Once we got closer to the car, an explosion took place inside the hospital. When the explosion took place we returned back for five minutes. A girl exploded herself in the emergency department in the hospital. When we knew that we went back to help the injured and martyrs and we started to move them in ambulances to private hospitals,” Hassan said.
The attacks were the first of their kind in Tartous, capital of Tartous province and home to a Russian naval facility, and in Jableh in Latakia province, near a Russian-operated air base.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his readiness to fight with the Syrian government against “the terrorist threat” and sent his condolences to Assad, the Kremlin said.
