Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

News

Death Toll in Devastating ISIS Attacks in Syria Climbs to 216

BEIRUT — The death toll from coordinated attacks by Islamic State fighters on a usually peaceful southern city and surrounding countryside has climbed to 216, a local health official said Thursday, in the worst violence to hit the area since the country’s conflict began.

Mass funerals were held in the city of Sweida on Thursday, a day after the wave of attacks that began in the early hours of the mourning and lasted for hours. The city was the scene of several suicide bombings, including one at a busy vegetable market that left a scene of devastation and set in motion the coordinated assaults.

ISIS militants also attacked a number of villages in the northeast of the province, also called Sweida, where local militias and residents took up arms to fight the advancing militants.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 246, including 111 members of local militias who fought IS militants who swarmed their villages. At least 135 civilians were among the killed, the Observatory said.

Hassan Omar, a government health official in Sweida province, said on Thursday that at least 150 people were wounded in the attacks; some of them were in critical condition.

An activist-operated Facebook page called Sweida News Network said many of the killed were shot in the head. The SNN said the militants sneaked into the villages under the cover of darkness, shooting residents as they slept.

The Observatory also reported bodies found killed inside homes and that the militants had also abducted some residents, their fate unknown.

The rare attacks in Sweida, populated mainly by Syria’s minority Druze, came amid a government offensive elsewhere in the country’s south. Government forces are battling an ISIS-linked group near the frontier with Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and near the border with Jordan. The group also has a small presence on the eastern edge of Sweida province, and in the desert in the adjacent Homs province.

Since their offensive in June, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have retaken territories controlled by the rebels along the Golan Heights frontier and are now fighting militants in the country’s southern tip.

ISIS has been largely defeated in Syria and Iraq, but still has pockets of territory it controls in eastern and southern Syria.

The extremist group boasted that its “soldiers” killed more than 100 people in Sweida.

In a statement posted on the group’s social media channels, it said its militants carried out surprise attacks on government and security centers, sparking clashes with Syrian troops and allied militias.

The Islamic State group posted no death toll for its own men in Wednesday’s fighting.

 

 

__________

Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng

Copyright 2018 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Advertisement

Related

News

The death toll from retaliatory US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria following a deadly drone attack has risen to 19, a war monitor...

News

After sustained aerial bombardments and elimination of terrorists, surviving fighters of the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) have buried no fewer than...

News

The Shura (Judicial) Council of the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP), an ISIS affiliate, has named Sani Shuwaram as new Leader (Wali) in...

News

The US State Department has said the Islamic State in West Africa Province will not get the $7 million bounty it placed on Abubakar...

Copyright ©