Isis claimed a series of bombings in two Syrian regime bastion cities on Monday, killing more than 140 people.
Attackers set off at least five suicide bombs and two devices planted in cars, the Observatory said, the first assaults of their kind in Tartous, where government ally Russia maintains a naval facility, and Jableh in Latakia province, near a Russian-operated air base.
The Observatory said 145 people were killed in the attacks by at least five suicide bombers and two devices planted in cars. State media said 78 people had been killed in what is President Bashar al-Assad’s coastal heartland.
The Observatory’s head Rami Abdel Rahman said the scale of the attacks on the two cities was “unprecedented”.