Islamic State takes Syrian hospital

Extremists kill at least 20 government troops, seize dorms

BEIRUT -- The Islamic State militant group launched an offensive against government forces in eastern Syria on Saturday and captured several buildings, including a hospital, in clashes that left more than two dozen people dead on both sides.

Deir el-Zour, near the border with Iraq, is split between government forces and Islamic State militants. Government-held areas have been under a monthslong siege by the extremists, and the U.N. has been airdropping aid to residents suffering from shortages of food and medicine.

The Local Coordination Committees, an activist-run collective, said Islamic State militants have captured the Assad hospital, university dorms and grain silos in an advance that began at dawn.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting killed at least 20 government troops and six Islamic State fighters. It said government forces have surrounded the hospital, but the fate of its staff and patients is not known.

Opposition activist Omar Abu Leila, who is from Deir el-Zour but lives in Europe, said Saturday's fighting is different from the past because the Islamic State has launched offensives on several fronts at the same time.

Abu Leila, who has a Facebook page that tracks developments in Deir el-Zour, said Islamic State militants entered the hospital and shot dead several police guards that they captured alive. He said Islamic State militants paraded the bodies of troops and policemen through the streets of areas they control.

Abu Leila said 20 troops and pro-government militiamen were killed and at least 10 Islamic State militants died in the fighting.

In northeastern Syria, a car bomb exploded in the predominantly Kurdish town of Qamishli. The Observatory said two people were killed and five were wounded, while Syrian Arab News Agency said five were killed and several others were wounded.

Different death tolls are not uncommon in the immediate aftermath of explosions in Syria.

Also Saturday, Lebanon's Hezbollah militia blamed the recent killing of a militant described as its top commander in Syria on extremist Sunni insurgents. Many expected the powerful Shiite group to point a finger at its traditional nemesis, Israel.

Hezbollah revealed a day earlier that Mustafa Badreddine, one of its most senior figures, died in an explosion in Damascus, the Syrian capital. Before leading thousands of militants in Syria, Badreddine, 55, is suspected of playing roles in the assassination of a Lebanese prime minister in 2005 and other bombings that date back to the attack on U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

Analysts said Friday that Badreddine's killing appeared to bear the hallmarks of an air raid by Israel, which has targeted several Lebanese militants in Syria in recent years. But in a statement, Hezbollah blamed it on "artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups in the area."

Hezbollah uses Takfiri, an Arabic word, to describe its extremist Sunni Muslim enemies, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

Hezbollah didn't specify which group killed Badreddine or when it happened.

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press and by Hugh Naylor of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/15/2016

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