At least 20 people have been killed in a string of explosions in government- and Kurdish-held areas of Syria, state media say.
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The bombings hit a bridge outside the provincial capital Tartous city, killing at least 35 people and wounding 43, state media said.
In the northeastern Bab Tadmor (Gate of Palmyra) neighborhood of the western city of Homs, located 162 kilometers (101 miles) north of Damascus, a bomb attack killed two civilians and left seven others injured.
The blasts were later claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. The Observatory said three people were killed.
US officials had hoped to reach a deal in time for President Obama’s meeting on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in China. The militant group said it sent three suicide bombers to the area, the first of them in a vehicle.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the bombings, which struck one day after government forces’ recapture of key military targets from rebels in eastern Aleppo in northern Syria, were coordinated.
The announcement came some 10 days after Turkey launched its first major military incursion into Syria since the start of the war in 2011, an operation aimed as much at preventing further Kurdish territorial gains as at driving back Islamic State. Putin meanwhile said he felt there was “some alignment of positions and an understanding of what we could do to de-escalate the situation in Syria”.
The Britain-based Observatory, which maintains a network of contacts in Syria, put the overall death toll at 53, although Syrian state TV said 48 were killed.
Another suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt amid the crowd which gathered to help those injured in the first blast.
In a statement carried by the group’s Amaq news agency, the IS said six of its suicide bombers had carried out bombings in the cities of Tartus, Homs, Hasakah and Damascus. Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t bridge differences with Moscow after another hour-long meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday.
A vehicle bomb struck a military checkpoint in the central provincial capital of Homs, killing three soldiers and a civilian, and wounding 10 others, according to the governor of Homs.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said he was working with Russian Federation and the USA to have northern Syria declared a no-fly zone, a proposal that has failed to get off the ground in the past.
The Kurdish YPG militia, a critical part of the US -backed campaign against Islamic State, took near complete control of Hasaka city in late August after a week of fighting with the government. The Observatory said the blast killed five members of the Kurdish police force, the Asayesh, and three civilians.
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The Islamic State group said it also detonated an explosive device in Qamishli, another northeastern city, targeting a group of Kurdish fighters.
