The Islamic State group launched a series of suicide bombings and other attacks across Syria on Monday, killing at least 48 people as it targeted government-held areas and Kurdish forces.
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The governor of Homs province said the vehicle bomb targeted a military checkpoint and that the casualties were soldiers.
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.
Foreign and Expatriates Ministry affirmed on Monday that the terrorist, bloody explosions which took place today in the Syrian cities of Tartous, Homs, Damascus countryside and Hasaka are a continuation of the systemized terrorism practiced by the terrorist organizations, calling on Security Council to take immediate, punitive and deterrent procedures against the countries that support terrorism.
State media also reported another bomb attack on the al-Sabboura road west of the capital Damascus, in which one person was killed, and three others wounded. A vehicle bomb at the Arzoneh bridge was followed by a suicide bomber, who targeted a crowd that was gathering.
On May 23, eight bombings were carried out by the Islamic State (IS) militants in the cities of Tartus and Jableh, another coastal city, killing 184 people and wounding at least 200 others.
The terror group has reportedly lost control of the last strip of its territory along the Syrian-Turkish border, according to sources and the Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, which maintains a network of contacts inside the country, put the toll at 47 dead.
Putin said he felt there was “some alignment of positions and an understanding of what we could do to de-escalate the situation in Syria”.
“We have had some productive conversations about what a real cessation of hostilities would look like, that would allow us both, the United States and Russian Federation, to focus our attention on common enemies, like ISIL and Nusra”, Obama said, referring to Islamic State and the hardline Nusra Front.
The IS group claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying its suicide bombers detonated themselves at military checkpoints in the aforementioned cities.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was working with the US -led coalition and Russian Federation to try to establish a ceasefire in Aleppo before the Eid al-Adha religious holiday expected to start around September 11.
Hasakeh city has been regularly targeted by IS, including in July when a motorcycle bomber killed at least 16 people outside a bakery in the city.
In the central city of Homs, four people were killed and 10 injured when a auto bomb exploded at the entrance to the Bab Tadmour district, Sana reported.
The attacks came as US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin discussed a ceasefire deal for Syria on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China.
It had been hoped a deal on a ceasefire and humanitarian deliveries would be announced jointly by Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov on Monday, but it was not forthcoming. He said a deal with Washington could be firmed up in the “coming days” but refused to give concrete details, saying that United States and Russian officials are still “working out some of our preliminary agreements”.
The US is particularly concerned by the deteriorating conditions in and around Syria’s second city, Aleppo, where rebel-held districts are once again under siege after government forces advanced on Sunday.
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The Observatory said the blast killed three members of the Kurdish police force, the Asayesh, and two civilians. Washington has urged Kurdish forces to honor a pledge to withdraw east of the Euphrates river to allay Turkish fears of a contiguous semi-autonomous Kurdish zone in Syria.
