In the northeastern city of Hasakeh, mostly controlled by Kurdish forces, a bomber on a motorbike killed six members of the Kurdish security forces and two civilians.In central Homs city, the target was the Al-Zahraa neighbourhood, whose residents are mostly from the same Alawite sect as Assad and have regularly been targeted.
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The extremist group’s Aamaq media agency posted that the Monday morning suicide attack killed and wounded 15 people. The Observatory said four soldiers were killed.
The IS-linked Amaq news agency reported the blast in Hasakeh, but did not carry any immediate claim of responsibility.
Monday’s bombings occurred as President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to agree on a fresh plan to achieve peace in Syria.
A vehicle bomb meanwhile struck Homs, a city around 80 km (50 miles) east of Tartous which has repeatedly been hit by bombings claimed by Islamic State.
Monday’s bombings came after advances by Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels expelled IS from the last stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border under their control.
An Islamic State attacker on a motorcycle blew himself up in the northeastern city of Hasakeh, killing eight, SANA said. “Even before the revolution it was carefully guarded”, said opposition media activist Yousef al-Boustani, referring to the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began with peaceful protests.
“The driver was killed and the two others got out of the auto and detonated their suicide belts, killing one person”, he 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.
Syrian army soldiers inspect the damage at the site of two explosions that hit the Arzouna bridge area at the entrance to Tartous, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on September 5, 2016.
Islamic State is not present in Aleppo, insurgent sources say, but mainstream rebels and hardline Islamist factions both are, including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formally affiliated to al Qaeda until it severed ties with the jihadist movement in July.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said he was working with Russian Federation and the United States to have northern Syria declared a no-fly zone, a proposal that has failed to get off the ground in the past.
Another bomb attack was also reported on the Al-Sabura road west of the capital Damascus, with state media saying one person had been killed and three injured in that bombing.
He said a deal could be firmed up in the “coming days” but refused to elaborate, saying that United States and Russian officials are still “working out some of our preliminary agreements”.
Russian Federation says it can not agree to a deal unless opposition fighters, backed by the United States and Middle East allies, are separated from al Qaeda-linked militants they overlap with in some areas.
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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. Putin said the two men had understood each other and an agreement on ways to significantly reduce the violence in Syria could be reached in days.
