BEIRUT: Two suicide bombers attacked a police station in Damascus on Monday, killing a number of civilians and policemen, the interior minister said, in the first such attack in the Syrian capital since July.
Four militants carried out the attack, killing more than 10 people, the pro-Damascus TV channel Al Mayadeen said. Russia’s RIA news agency reported that 15 people were killed.
Militants targeted the station in the Al Midan neighbourhood and clashed with police officers there, Interior Minister Mohammad al Shaar said in comments broadcast by state television from the police station.
One attacker blew himself up at the main entrance and another detonated his explosive device on the first floor, he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Footage broadcast by state TV showed bodies wrapped in shrouds at the scene and fire fighters putting out flames. Previous attacks in Damascus have been claimed by both IS and the Tahrir al Sham alliance, which is led by the group formerly known as the Nusra Front.
Meanwhile, Raqa’s hospital, a big complex pocked with bullets holes, whose capture will signal the end of IS’s crumbling Syrian capital, lies just 200 yards from a front-line base of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Beyond it, a roundabout where the militants once displayed the heads of their enemies, crucified people and held military parades at the height of their expansion is another strategic prize sought by the US-backed militia alliance.
Commanders directing the battle on the ground say seizing these and a nearby stadium, IS’s last strongholds in the city, could take as little as a week once a final assault begins against just a few hundred remaining militants.
But the ultra-hardline group is holding civilian hostages in the hospital and stadium and using sniper fire, booby traps and tunnels that emerge behind SDF lines to slow the battle.
The SDF faces a tough final showdown with IS which commanders say will end at the hospital, now almost completely surrounded.
“There are many civilians being held. We can’t use heavy weaponry or air strikes around the hospital or stadium, so we’ll encircle them as we advance,” commander Haval Gabar said at the front-line base, a home that SDF units captured last week.
“The hospital will be the last point (in Raqa) to be freed,” he said on Saturday, as bullets coming from the sprawling medical complex whizzed over the base.
The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG, has been fighting since June to drive IS from Raqa city, backed by air strikes and special forces from a US-led coalition.
The assault, which YPG officials initially predicted would take weeks, has dragged on as IS bogs down forces with tactics used in other bastions such as Iraq’s Mosul.
Senior Kurdish commanders recently said Raqa would fall by the end of October. — Agencies
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