Armed “terrorists” have blown up an oil pipeline west of the flashpoint Syrian city of Homs, state media reported yesterday, but an anti-regime group said the government was behind the blast.

“An armed terrorist group targeted in a sabotage operation the pipeline of Tal al-Shor, west of Homs,” Syria’s third-largest city, said the official news agency Sana.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based activist network, also reported the explosion of “an oil pipeline in Homs which transports crude to the (central) city’s refinery from eastern Syria.” It gave no cause for the blast.

But the Local Coordination Committees, which organises protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, accused his government of deliberately destroying the pipeline, which serves a region seen as staunchly opposed to his rule.

Meanwhile Syrian security for-ces yesterday killed at least seven civilians including a woman in an assault on the restive central city of Homs, activists said. The deaths occurred as the security forces used sniper fire and “arbitrary” shelling during raids on three districts of the city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement sent to AFP. Homs, one of the main hubs of the unprecedented demonstrations against Mr Assad’s regime, has been besieged by security forces and loyalist militias for more than two months.

Footage posted on video-sharing website YouTube shows huge flames burning above the site of a pipeline said to be the one near Homs, with massive clouds of black smoke billowing out overhead.

The explosion is the third reported attack on energy infrastructure since the outbreak of the pro-reform protest movement in mid-March.

On July 13, activists said a gas pipeline exploded in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, home to Syria’s oil and gas fields. And on July 29, Sana reported an attack by a subversive group against an oil pipeline near Homs.

According to an industry expert in Damascus, Syria’s oil output has slumped to 120,000 barrels per day from 340,000 bpd before the unrest due to sanctions.