Car suicide blasts rock Syrian town
Two car have bombs exploded in southern Syria and a rocket slammed into a building in the north in renewed violence that state media blamed on rebel fighters.
The rocket attack in the northern city of Aleppo and the suicide car bombings in Daraa, south of Damascus, occurred during a particularly bloody week nearly two years after an uprising began against president Bashar Assad’s regime.
Yesterday, opposition activists said pro-government militia swept through a town in central Syria, torching houses and killing more than 100 people.
Both sides have been blaming each other for the recent attacks, and it was the second time in a week that the government accused rebels of firing rockets.
The state-run SANA news agency said the morning attack in Aleppo was carried out by terrorists, a term the regime uses for rebels. But the Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria, an activist group, and the Aleppo Media Centre, a network of anti-regime activists, accused the government of launching an air strike.
On Tuesday, 87 people were killed in twin blasts at Aleppo University. The regime said rebels hit the university with rockets. Rebels said the deaths resulted from regime airstrikes.
Syria’s state-run TV claimed that shortly after the rocket hit the building in Aleppo, militants linked to an al Qaida group detonated cars filled with explosives near a mosque in Daraa as worshippers were leaving following Friday prayers.
State TV reports said both attacks caused many casualties, but it was not immediately known how many people were killed or wounded in the two cities.
Also today, fighting between Syrian rebels and Assad loyalists flared in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, killing 12 people and wounding at least 20 others, the UN Relief and Works Agency said.
