ISIS makes headway into eastern Syria, says watchdog

In this photo taken from video released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrians carry a victim from a massive car bomb in the central village of Horrah, in the province of Hama, Syria on Friday.

The jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has seized at least three towns in eastern Syria as the al-Qaeda offshoot pushes to expand its territorial gains near the Iraqi border, a monitoring group said on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that ISIS fighters had seized the towns of Muhassan, al-Buleel and al-Buamer in the eastern province of Deir al-Zueir near a major military base.

ISIS launched a wide-scale attack in late April on the eastern, western and south-western regions of Deir al-Zueir.

“This advance marks an important strategic step as part of ISIS’s attempt to link the areas under its control in Iraq to those under its grip in Syria,” the Britain-based Observatory said in a statement.

The splinter al-Qaeda group already holds the north-eastern Syrian province of al-Raqqa and swathes of neighbouring western Iraq, where last week it captured the country’s second city, Mosul, in a blitz.

If it seized Deir al-Zour, ISIS would control a large cross-border area as well as gaining valuable oil wells.

The radical group explicitly states that it wants to establish a caliphate across numerous Arab countries and break down the borders created by Western colonial powers.

Elsewhere in Syria, at least 34 people were killed on Friday when a car bomb exploded in a government-controlled village in the central province of Hama, state media reported.

The official SANA news agency said that more than 50 people were wounded in the attack in al-Horra village.

A source at Hama police command told SANA that “terrorists blew up a truck loaded with about three tonnes of explosive materials which caused the destruction of a large number of houses and buildings in the village.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 38 people were killed in the bombing, including civilians and security personnel, and more than 40 others wounded.

The watchdog said the village is dominated by Alawites, a sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

According to Beirut-based activists, the Islamic Front, a rebel group, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had targeted militias loyal to al-Assad. At least 162,000 people have been killed in Syria since the crisis started in March 2011, according to activists.