The Latest: Kurdish-led group announces Raqqa campaign

The spokesman for the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces says the U.S.-backed group has launched its campaign to expel the Islamic State group from Raqqa, the extremists' de facto capital in northern Syria.

Residents and media activists say funerals are being held for victims of multiple bombings that hit two government strongholds in Syria.

The attacks were the most serious breach of President Bashar Assad's coastal strongholds in the five-year-old Syrian civil war.

Kuralenko, who heads the Russian center monitoring joint efforts with the United States to curb the fighting, says the Russians have called for a "regime of silence" in Eastern Ghouta and Darayya starting at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

The bombing was part of a coordinated wave of attacks claimed by the Islamic State group in Jableh and the city of Tartus, government strongholds that have so far remained mostly immune to the violence of Syria's civil war, now in its sixth year.