Two powerful car bombs targeting security posts ripped through Syria’s second city of Aleppo Friday, killing at least 25 people, state media said, even as tanks surged into battered protest hub Homs.
State television said “armed terrorist groups” carried out the attacks, the first in Aleppo since the outbreak of an uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad almost a year ago. It said a “suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives” carried out one of the attacks on a police station, flattening a nearby food distribution centre.
The second bombing targeted an intelligence base. “The number of martyrs who have been transported to hospital in Aleppo have so far reached 25 dead and 175 wounded as a result of the terrorist attacks,” the health ministry said, as quoted by state television. The General Commission of the Syrian Revolution, an opposition group, said that the attacks were “staged by the regime,” in a statement emailed to AFP in Beirut.
State television showed gruesome images of mangled bodies in pools of blood in the street outside rows of shattered buildings. Emergency workers held up body parts, including hands, feet and a torso. Soldiers were among the casualties. Its footage was aired live from the site of the blasts, with bulldozers quickly deployed to clear away shattered concrete strewn across a broad avenue, revealing deep craters in the ground.
“A terrorist blew himself up with his car 100 metres (yards) from the entrance of the police station,” the report said, adding that emergency services were scouring the rubble for bodies. Aleppo, a northern commercial hub, has been largely spared the unrest that has rocked Syria since last March, leaving more than 6,000 people dead according to rights groups. In central Syria, tanks stormed a district in the flashpoint city of Homs as troops launched a house-to-house sweep of the area to crush the Assad regime’s opponents, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “The tanks entered the neighbourhood of Inshaat overnight,” he said, adding troops were still deploying.
Inshaat is next to the protest hub of Baba Amr in Homs, which has been subjected to a withering assault by regime forces since Saturday that has killed more than 400 people, activists say. At least four people were killed Friday in Homs, including two children who died in the shelling of Baba Amr, said the Observatory. Later, regime forces began shooting at worshippers leaving Al-Rawda mosque in Al-Waer district of Homs, it said.
The security forces deployed heavily outside mosques across Syria, firing on worshippers in some areas to prevent protests denouncing Russia’s steadfast support of the Assad regime, activists said. Internet-based activists had urged Syrians to protest under the banner of “Russia is killing our children.” Russia hit back on Friday, saying the opposition bore full responsibility for the ongoing violence while accusing the West of pushing the regime’s opponents into armed conflict.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told ITAR-Tass news agency the opposition’s refusal to enter direct talks with Syria’s government meant it “bears full responsibility for improving the situation.” He accused the West of being “accomplices in the process of inflaming the crisis.”
