May 10, 2012 (Alarabiya with agencies)
May 10, 2012 (Alarabiya with agencies)
Forty people were killed and 170 others were wounded in two successive powerful explosions that shook the Syrian capital early on Thursday, the state reported, as both the government and the opposition traded blames over the cause of the bombings.
The state television said the two “terrorist attacks” killed and wounded dozens “on the freeway in the south of Damascus.” The television added that the blasts occurred “as people were heading to work and children to school.”
It showed footage of the blasts with mangled bodies lay in the street amid the carcasses of shouldering vehicles.
Major General Robert Mood, chief of a U.N. observer mission in Syria, visited the site to survey the aftermath, Al Arabiya correspondent reported
Haitham al-Maleh, of the opposition Syrian National Council, accused the regime in Damascus of masterminding the bombings, while London-based Syrian activist and journalist Bassam Jaara described the bombings as “the regime’s response to the U.N. condemnation of its acts.”
Samir Nashar, of the Syrian National Council’s executive branch, said, “The regime is behind this.”
He told AFP the aim of the blasts was to send a warning to U.N. observers monitoring a tenuous truce in Syria that they were in danger and to impress upon the international community that the regime was battling “terrorists.”
Damascus has been the target of a number of bombs in past months as President Bashar al-Assad is faced with a revolt against his regime which his forces are attempting to crush.
The blasts came a day after a bomb attack on a U.N. observer convoy in the southern city of Daraa, which injured six Syrian troops escorting the vehicles.
Responding to the Daraa attack, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon warned Syria’s government and opposition there is only a “brief window” to avoid civil war and indicated the future of the ceasefire monitoring mission was in doubt.
Highlighting an “alarming upsurge” of roadside bombs, alongside government attacks, Ban said both sides “must realize that we have a brief window to stop the violence, a brief opportunity to create an opening for political engagement between the government and those seeking change.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that almost 12,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria since the revolt, inspired by Arab Spring uprisings, broke out in March last year.
About 800 of them have died since a U.N.-backed truce was supposed to have taken effect on April 12.
Damascus was hit by two blasts on May 6, with three soldiers wounded in one of the attacks. Television footage showed a mangled car destroyed by one of the explosions.
A deadly suicide bombing at Zein al-Abidin mosque in the capital’s central Midan district on April 27 killed 11 people and wounded dozens, according to state media.
An Islamist group calling itself al-Nusra Front had earlier claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing on April 20 near the Syrian city of Hama that targeted a restaurant used by the security forces.
The Syrian authorities regularly blame the blasts on “terrorist groups” they say are behind the violence that has swept the country for the past 14 months.
The opposition accuses regime forces of being behind the bombings in an attempt to discredit protesters demanding the ouster of Assad.
