DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Islamic State kills about 100 in southwest Syria attacks.

The coordinated attacks were the deadliest to hit government territory in many months. Some 96 people were killed and 176 wounded in total, the head of the Sweida health authority told the pro-Damascus Sham FM radio.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said 156 people were killed. Islamic State said in a statement that it had killed more than 100 people in the attacks.

Northeast of Sweida city, the jihadists launched simultaneous attacks on several villages where they clashed with government forces, state media and the Observatory said.

In the city itself, at least two attackers blew themselves up, one near a marketplace and the second in another district, state television said. State news agency SANA said two other IS militants were killed before they could detonate their bombs.

With about half a million dead, another eight million internally displaced, a further five million or so refugees in neighboring countries, various Kurdish groups in control of the northeastern third of the country, and no end in sight, Syria as it was known has ceased to exist.