Two huge bomb blasts killed at least 27 people in the heart of the Syrian capital on Saturday, state media said, as international envoy Kofi Annan warned of regional fallout from the year-long bloodshed in Syria.
The early morning “terrorist” attacks, apparently car bombings timed minutes apart, targeted criminal police headquarters in the Duwar al-Jamarek area and air force intelligence offices in Al-Qasaa district, state television said. “Twenty-seven people, mostly civilians, were killed and 97 others wounded in the two explosions,” Health Minister Wael al-Halaqi said on Syria News, another official television channel. As angry residents vented their fury at Arab supporters of anti-regime activists, he said the remains of three bodies were among the grisly toll of the early morning blasts.
The state broadcaster ran footage of a charred body inside the mangled remains of a smouldering vehicle in Duwar al-Jamarek (Customs Roundabout). The facade of a multi-storey building was totally gutted by the impact of the other blast and several cars destroyed. The television broadcast images of wrecked apartments and blood-splattered streets. Paris, which has been at the forefront of calls for Assad to quit, condemned the attacks. “France condemns all acts of terrorism, which cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said, expressing his condolences to the families of the victims.
A spate of bombings have hit Syria’s big cities in recent months amid growing concerns that Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of the uprising against Assad. The opposition has accused the regime of having stage-managed the attacks. Commentators on state television blamed Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the fiercest Arab critics of President Bashar al-Assad over his regime’s deadly crackdown on dissent since March 2011, which have both called for rebels to be armed.
“Saudi Arabia is sending us terrorists,” a resident of the devastated areas said on television. “These are the friends … of the Istanbul council,” said another, referring to the opposition Syrian National Council set up in the Turkish city last August. An Arab diplomat, on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Saudi Arabia, which closed its embassy in Damascus this week, was delivering military equipment to Syrian rebels.
“Saudi military equipment is on its way to Jordan to arm the (rebel) Free Syrian Army,” the diplomat said. “This is a Saudi initiative to stop the massacres in Syria.” Baghdad, meanwhile, has informed Tehran that it will not permit arms shipments to Syria to pass through or over its territory, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Saturday. The United States has said it was concerned that Iranian cargo flights over Iraq to Syria could be carrying arms to help Damascus, a close ally of Tehran, crush protests.
On Friday, UN-Arab League peace envoy Annan warned of a regional “escalation” of the deadly conflict in Syria and urged the UN Security Council to close ranks to put pressure on Assad. The former United Nations chief, who met Assad in Damascus last weekend, has ordered a team of UN experts to Syria, on a trip starting Sunday, to discuss a possible ceasefire and international monitoring mission, his spokesman said. Russian and China have twice used their veto powers as permanent members to block Security Council resolutions on the Syrian crisis that they said were unbalanced.
