SyriaISIS bomb attacks in Syria’s Alawite heartland kill 148

Published 24 May 2016

ISIS militants set off bombs that killed more than 140 people in the Syrian towns of Jableh and Tartous, in the Assad regime’s Alawite-controlled coastal heartland. The Alawite region on north-west Syria, from which the Assad family and most of Syria’s higher echelon hail, has so far escaped the worst of the fighting in Syria’s civil war.

ISIS militants set off bombs that killed more than 140 people in the Syiran towns of Jableh and Tartous, in the Assad regime’s Alawite-controlled coastal heartland.

The BBC reports that at least five suicide attackers somehow evaded the tight security in the region, setting off car bombs at a petrol station in Tartous and a hospital and other primarily civilian targets in Jableh. Bus stations in both cities were also hit.

The Alawite region on north-west Syria, from which the Assad family and most of Syria’s higher echelon hail, has escaped the worst of the fighting in Syria’s civil war. Young Alawite men, however, have been killed and injured in far higher proportion than other ethnic groups in the war-torn country. The Syrian military now consists of Alawites and Shi’as, as practically all the Sunni, Druze, and Christian soldiers and officers have defected, and young men from these communicates no longer report to recruitment centers.

Western intelligence services now estimate that more than a quarter of all Alawite men of fighting age had been killed.

Islamists regard the Alawites as heretics.

The bombings were confirmed by state media, but the official Syrian news agency said that fewer than 100 were killed.

The BBC notes that Tartous is the site of the main Russian naval base.