Twin car bombs targeting security posts in Syria’s second city of Aleppo killed at least 28 people yesterday, state media said, as rebels accused the regime of carrying out the attacks as a diversion.
The explosions came as tank-backed troops advanced on pockets of resistance in the battered protest hub of Homs, and as heavy security deployments nationwide thwarted planned protests against key regime ally Russia.
The powerful mid-morning blasts ripped through the northern commercial hub, also wounding 235 people, said state TV, which broadcast gruesome footage. Mangled bodies were shown in pools of blood outside rows of shattered buildings and piles of rubble strewn across a broad avenue.
State TV called the bombings, the first in Aleppo since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime erupted almost a year ago, the work of “armed terrorist gangs.”
But the rebel Free Syrian Army said the government itself was behind the attacks, hoping to divert attention from its military operations against civilians in the besieged protest city of Homs.
“This criminal regime is ... carrying out bomb attacks in Aleppo to steer attention away from what it is doing in Homs, Zabadani and elsewhere,” its spokesman, Colonel Maher Nouaimi, said.
State TV showed emergency workers holding up body parts, including hands, feet and a torso. Soldiers were among the casualties, it said.
“The number of casualties from the two car bombs in Aleppo has risen to 28 dead and 235 wounded,” said the Health Ministry. Among the dead were soldiers and civilians, including children.
“In addition, there were four bags full of body parts of other victims,” it said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 30 people were killed in the Aleppo blasts.
Syria blamed the blasts on “terrorists” backed by Arab and Western nations, in a letter sent to the UN secretary general, the UN Security Council, the Arab League and other organisations.
“Certain countries in the region are behind a propaganda campaign against Syria and are harbouring armed terrorists for so-called humanitarian reasons,” it wrote, according to the official SANA state news agency.
Aleppo has been largely spared the unrest that has rocked the country and killed more than 6,000 people, say rights groups.
In central Syria, tanks stormed a district in Homs as troops launched a house-to-house sweep to crush regime opponents, the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman said. “The tanks entered the neighbourhood of Inshaat overnight,” he said.
Inshaat is next to Baba Amr district, which has been subjected to a withering assault by regime forces since Saturday that has killed more than 450 people, activists say.
Forty-two people were killed across Syria yesterday, including security force members, said the Observatory. At least 20 died in Homs, among them two children killed by shelling in Baba Amr.
Security forces, meanwhile, deployed heavily outside mosques nationwide, firing on worshippers in some areas to prevent protests denouncing Russia’s steadfast support for the Assad regime, activists said.
Internet-based activists had urged protests under the banner of “Russia is killing our children.”
But Moscow said Syria’s opposition “bears full responsibility” for the ongoing violence, while accusing the West of pushing regime opponents into armed conflict.