BEIRUT - A bomb attack claimed by Islamic State in the Syrian government-controlled city of Homs kiled at least 24 people on Tuesday.
The governor of Homs said the first of two explosions was caused by a car bomb which targeted a security checkpoint. A suicide bomber then set off an explosive belt, state media reported. "We know we are targets for terrorists, especially now the (Syrian) army is advancing and local reconciliation agreements are being implemented," the governor told Reuters by phone.
Seventeen people are still in hospital, one of whom is in a critical condition, the governor said. Syrian state TV earlier reported 22 people had died and more than 100 people had been injured.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 29. It said those killed in the explosions, which took place in a mostly Alawite district, included 15 members of government forces and pro-government militiamen.
Syria's nearly five-year-old civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and jihadi fighters. Islamic State said in a statement its attack had killed at least 30 people.
The Syrian army and allied forces have been battling Islamic State in areas to the east and southeast of Homs city. They recently took back several villages including Maheen 80 km (50 miles) southeast of the city.
Syria's regime on Tuesday seized a strategic southern town from rebel forces, as the main opposition coalition was to debate whether to attend peace talks in Geneva this week. The capture of Sheikh Miskeen in southern Daraa province is the latest victory for government forces, who have been on the offensive since ally Russia began strikes in the country in late September.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday his country's intervention had helped "turn around" the situation in Syria, "reducing the territory controlled by terrorists."
Syrian state media announced the capture of Sheikh Miskeen on Tuesday morning, as did the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.
Meanwhile, security forces found a mass grave in the Iraqi city of Ramadi containing the remains of at least 18 people killed by the Islamic State group, police said Tuesday.
Ramadi was recaptured at the end of last month from IS, which overran large parts of Iraq in 2014 and has repeatedly carried out mass killings and other atrocities in areas it controls.
"So far, we have removed 18 bodies including five members of the police, and work is continuing to remove the remaining victims," police Major Tareq Abdulkarim told AFP.
The mass grave in the Al-Jamiya area of central Ramadi, which was found on Monday, is "expected to contain the bodies of 40 victims," Abdulkarim said.
In Syria, the Observatory said regime troops had taken the town backed by allied militia including fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, as well as Russian air strikes.
Sheikh Miskeen lies on a vital crossroads between Damascus to the north and the government-controlled city of Sweida to the east. It is 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the rebel stronghold of Nawa, another target for regime forces.
A Syrian security source earlier told AFP the town was a "launching pad" for rebel operations, and one of the opposition's "centres of gravity for the whole of Daraa province". He said seizing control of the town would sever a rebel supply route to areas under opposition control around Damascus.
Most of Daraa province is controlled by opposition forces, though the government holds parts of the provincial capital and a few villages in the northwest.
The town's capture comes after the government captured the towns of Rabia and Salma from rebels in coastal Latakia province, backed by Russian air strikes and military advisors.
Russia began air strikes in support of the Syrian government on September 30, saying it was targeting the Islamic State group and other "terrorists". But the opposition and activists accuse it of focusing more on Islamist and moderate rebels, and of killing civilians.
The regime advances come as world powers push for a new round of peace talks scheduled to begin on Friday in Geneva, after a delay over who will represent Syria's opposition.
A coalition of key opposition bodies known as the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) has put together a delegation for the talks, but Moscow has criticised it as unrepresentative.
The Committee excludes Syria's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as well as other opposition figures, and it has faced pressure to broaden its delegation, or participate alongside a second opposition delegation.
Lavrov on Tuesday warned that the talks would fail if the PYD was excluded, but Turkey has pushed back against the party's involvement. "We are categorically against the YPG and PYD sitting at the table," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told ruling party lawmakers in parliament on Tuesday.