DAMASCUS // At least two people were killed and four others wounded in northwestern Syria on Thursday when a suicide bomber struck near a mosque in the regime stronghold of Latakia, according to state media.
“A terrorist attack hit near the Khulafa Al Rashideen mosque in the Daatur district of Latakia as people emerged from afternoon prayers,” state television said.
Official news agency Sana quoted a senior police source as saying that two people were killed and four others wounded when the attacker blew himself up while riding his motorcycle in the coastal city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition monitoring group, said three people had been killed in the attack.
Last month, bombings claimed by ISIL in the nearby seaside cities of Jableh and Tartus killed at least 170 people.
The group is not known to have a significant presence in Syria’s coastal provinces, where its rival, Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra, is much more prominent.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said on Thursday that humanitarian aid drops to besieged areas in Syria are not imminent and need regime approval.
It came despite urgent calls from Britain and France for deliveries to start.
Humanitarian access in Syria has been a key sticking point in stalled UN-backed peace talks aimed at ending the five-year war that has killed at least 280,000 people and displaced millions.
Last month the UN said that if it did not see improvement on aid access to besieged areas by June 1, it would task the UN food agency to carry out air drops.
But a deputy to UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday that, “as long as the World Food Programme has not yet finalised its plans, I don’t think there’s something imminent”.
Ramzi Ezzedine Ramzi stressed air drops were “a very complex venture” that would need approval from Damascus.
Mr De Mistura pointed out last week that it can take six weeks of air drops to deliver the same amount of aid as a single convoy over land.
* Agence France-Presse
