15 killed in Syria bombing

BEIRUT: At least 15 people were killed on Thursday in a car bombing in Syria’s coastal city of Jableh, a bastion of the regime, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

Syrian state television also reported the blast near the town’s municipal stadium, blaming it on a suicide bomber.

A local health official told the station the town’s hospital had received the bodies of nine dead and was treating 25 wounded.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said it was not clear whether those killed were civilians, regime troops or loyalist fighters.

He said security services had cordoned off the area around the stadium where the explosion took place.

State television showed a burning car surrounded by onlookers. It said the attack had taken place in a crowded street.

In May last year, a series of suicide attacks in Jableh and Tartus claimed by the Islamic State group left more than 170 dead.

Meanwhile, Syria is prepared for “open battle” against insurgents in the province where Damascus has been allowing them to gather under ceasefire deals, said the government official in charge of negotiations that have seen rebels yield swathes of territory.

The past year has seen President Bashar al-Assad’s government recapture many key areas from rebels, including suburbs of the capital in what Damascus calls “reconciliation” deals.

Insurgents agree to give up territory in return for safe passage out.

Fighters have been given safe passage to Idlib Province, the biggest remaining rebel stronghold, which is in the northwest of the country.

The government has sent buses to take them with their families.

Idlib was also the destination for many of the 35,000 rebel fighters and civilians evacuated from eastern Aleppo last month in a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, after insurgent groups were routed in the city.

Ali Haidar, who as national reconciliation minister has been responsible for negotiating local deals, said he expected more accords in coming months to send thousands of fighters to Idlib from areas near Damascus and south of it, as the army advances.

But in an interview in Damascus, he said the state could not allow Idlib to remain in insurgent hands indefinitely.

Unless there was an international deal that addressed the situation, “then the other option is to go to an open battle with them”, he said.

“The Syrian state is clear in its policy when it said it will not forego any patch of Syria, and I think Idlib is one of the coming hot areas,” Haidar told Reuters.

He said foreign fighters must leave and rebel supply lines via Turkey be cut off.

Allowing fighters who surrender elsewhere to escape to Idlib has emerged as the basic offer on the table wherever government forces have rebel-held areas under siege. Damascus says its deals permit Syrians to stay as life returns to normal after a ceasefire.

The opposition says the deals amount to forced demographic change to drive out Assad’s opponents, an aim which the government denies.

Idlib province at the border with Turkey is almost entirely controlled by rebel groups fighting to topple Assad, including powerful Islamist factions such as Ahrar al-Sham and Fateh al-Sham, formally known as the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.