AMMAN: The militant Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for suicide and car bomb blasts that struck a Damascus suburb on Saturday near one of Syria’s holiest shrines. A monitoring group said at least 20 people were killed in the explosions.

State television showed debris, mangled cars and wrecked shops in a main commercial thoroughfare near the shrine of Syeda Zeinab, in an area where at least three bomb attacks claimed by IS have killed and woun­ded scores of people this year.

State media said at least eight people were killed. But the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll had risen to at least 20, including at least 13 civilians, with the other victims coming from pro-government militias.

It said the number was expected to rise because many of the scores of wounded people were in critical condition.

IS claims responsibility for suicide and bomb attacks

IS said two of its suicide bombers had blown themselves up and operatives had detonated an explosives-laden car, according to the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency.

The shrine is said to be a magnet for thousands of Iraqi and Afghan Shia militia recruits who go there before being assigned to the front lines, where they fight against the Sunni groups trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Almost every Shia militia fighter bears insignia on his combat fatigues with the words “For your sake, Syeda Zeinab”.

Sectarian divide

The heavily garrisoned area near the shrine is also a well-known stronghold of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group, an Iranian-backed movement that is one of President Assad’s chief allies.

Non-jihadist rebels in Syria say Iran’s strong military intervention on the side of Mr Assad, alongside its backing of other Shia militias, is fuelling the sectarian dimension of the nearly six-year Syrian civil war by drawing even more radical foreign Sunni militants into the country.

Separately, US-backed Syrian forces made new territorial gains against IS on Saturday, moving closer to another of its major strongholds in northern Syria, according to the monitoring group.

The Observatory said the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), bringing together Kurdish and Arab fighters, were now almost 17km from the city of al-Bab, an IS stronghold northeast of Aleppo.

The SDF on Friday cut off the last route into the encircled town of Manbij from al-Bab after over a week of advances around that area, allowing it to lay siege to the large town from all directions, the monitor said.

In other frontlines in northern Syria, two rebel sources said Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their relentless aerial bombing of their positions in the northern city of Aleppo.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2016