Bomb blasts killed more than 100 people in the Syrian coastal cities of Jableh and Tartus, monitors said this morning, in a government-controlled area that hosts Russian forces.
The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Mediterranean cites that have up to now escaped the worst of the conflict, saying it was targetting supporters of President Bashar al-Assad.
Scores were wounded in at least five suicide attacks and two car bombs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, the first assaults of their kind in Tartus, where Russia maintains a naval facility, and at Jableh.
Fighting has increased in other parts of Syria in recent weeks as world powers struggle to revive a ceasefire in western Syria and after peace talks in Geneva this year broke down.
State media reported that a car bomb and two suicide bombers attacked a petrol station in Tartus. In Jableh, one of the four blasts hit near a hospital, state media and the Observatory reported.
Footage broadcast by the state-run Ikhbariya news channel of what it said were scenes of the blasts in Jableh showed several twisted and incinerated cars and minivans.
The Syrian Observatory said at least 53 people were killed in Jableh, and 48 in Tartous.
The interior ministry said in a statement more than 20 people had been killed, and one state media outlet put the death toll at 45 people.
