17 KILLED IN FIGHTING IN SOUTHERN SYRIA FOLLOWING A BOMBING

Mon 08 April 2024:

An explosion that killed many children the day before set off a wave of violence that claimed at least 17 lives in the Deraa region in southern Syria, according to a war monitor.

Deraa was the birthplace of the 2011 rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but due to a Russian-backed ceasefire agreement, government control was restored there in 2018.

Since then, the province has been beset by unrest, with regular skirmishes and unstable living circumstances.

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Sunday that an armed group led by a figure who previously worked for a Syrian state security agency had been accused by a rival group of planting an explosive device that went off on Saturday in the city of al-Sanamayn, killing eight children.

On Sunday, a rival armed group led by a former member of ISIL (ISIS) who now works for military intelligence stormed part of al-Sanamayn and the two groups began clashing, the monitor said.

The battle left 17 dead, among them a former ISIL member, 12 fighters, and a civilian killed by a stray bullet, SOHR said.

The monitor, which added that clashes were ongoing on Sunday afternoon, had reported 12 dead in a previous toll. Syrian state media did not immediately report the clashes.

Official news agency SANA, quoting a police source, gave a different toll for Saturday’s explosion, saying seven children were killed in the blast, which it blamed on “terrorists”.

Attacks, some claimed by ISIL, regularly occur in Deraa province, as well as armed clashes and assassinations of government supporters, former opposition figures and civilians working for the government.

Former rebels in the province who accepted the 2018 ceasefire deal sponsor

In late January, SOHR said a local leader and seven other members of an ISIL affiliate were killed in clashes with local factions in the province.

The war in Syria, which erupted in 2011 after the government repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests, has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s economy and infrastructure.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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