At least four people were killed yesterday in a car bomb that exploded in a hospital car park in the town of Qardaha in Latakia province, western Syria, state media said.

It was the first explosion to target the ancestral town of President Bashar al-Assad in the nearly four year conflict which has engulfed the country. Elsewhere the US-led coalition staged six air strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria and Iraq in the past 24 hours, the Combined Joint Task Force said yesterday. The latest of the daily raids included one that destroyed two Islamic State fighting positions near Kobani, Syria, where Kurdish forces have been pushing back Islamic State with the help of the coalition.