Isil suicide attacker kills at keast 140 people in Assad 's Heartland

Isil jihadists have claimed responsibility for bomb blasts that killed more than 140 people in the Syrian towns of Jableh and Tartous in the Assad regime's coastal heartland.

At least five suicide attackers evaded security, setting off car bombs at a petrol station in Tartous and a hospital and other primarily civilian targets in Jableh. Busy bus stations in both cities were hit. The coastal strip of Syria is dominated by members of the Alawite minority, which makes up about 10 per cent of the Syrian population but accounts for most of the regime's inner leadership circle, including President Bashar al-Assad and his family.



It has been spared the worst of the fighting in Syria's civil war, though young Alawite men have suffered greater losses proportionally than any other group. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's main news outlet, Amaq, issued a single line statement saying the group had attacked "gatherings of the Alawites". It regards the sect as heretical. The coast has also become home to thousands of people of other sects fleeing the fighting elsewhere in the country.

The bombings were confirmed by state media, though it gave a lower death toll than the 148 reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the main overseas monitor.

Photographs posted online showed grim scenes, with bodies being carried away and the charred, twisted remains of buses and cars.

Tartous is the site of the main Russian naval base, part of a growing chain of Russian military installations across the country. Jableh is to the north in Latakia province, home to the main air base being used by the Russian jets supporting the regime from the air.

The Kremlin said the blasts showed the need to continue peace talks.

With Isil losing ground both in Syria, to a Kurdish-led, US-supported alliance in the north-east, and in Iraq, it is increasing the frequency of bomb attacks against civilians. Charles Lister, an analyst of Islamist groups in Syria, said it was returning to its tactics of trying to foment a tit-for-tat cycle of sectarian strife "that incapacitates moderates and empowers extremists".

Russia and the regime bombed the outskirts of Aleppo over the weekend, while the regime also attacked and retook part of the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus.

u?Twin bombings also claimed by Isil hit Yemeni forces in Aden yesterday, killing at least 41 people in the latest of a spate of attacks in the city.