BEIRUT: Two suicide bombers detonated their explosives, killing at least two security officers in the Syrian coastal city of Tartous, Syrian state television reported after midnight on Sunday.

It said the officers were part of a security patrol that stopped the bombers, who then blew themselves up. Others were injured in the blasts, including civilians, state TV said. It gave no further details.

British-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been explosions from suicide bombers in Tartous and that at least two people were killed.

Tartous has not been targeted for several months, and has largely escaped the violence that has engulfed other areas of the country. The city is part of President Bashar al-Assad’s coastal heartland.

The incident took place as a fragile Russian and Turkish-backed ceasefire, welcomed by the United Nations, entered its third day with ongoing violations including clashes and air raids.

A series of bombings in May killed scores of people in Tartous and another city on the Mediterranean coast near government-controlled territory that hosts Russian military bases. Syrian government warplanes carried out several air strikes and low-level clashes persisted in some areas on Sunday, but a Russian- and Turkish-backed ceasefire largely held in other areas on its third day, a monitoring group and rebels said.

Jets bombed the villages of Kafr Kar, Mintar and around the town of Banan in the southern Aleppo countryside, the observatory said. It said government forces also advanced overnight against rebels in the Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, seizing 10 farms.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2017