A car bomb has killed three people in Syria’s second city, Aleppo, as a UN-led humanitarian mission was due to arrive in the country to assess ways of relieving civilians’ suffering.
The blast occurred outside one of the many branches of the regime’s security apparatus and left 25 people wounded, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The government blamed it on “terrorists”, its term for the increasingly armed opposition, and said that the bomb went off outside a post office and residential buildings.
The explosion came a day after twin car bombings in the capital killed 27 people and wounded another 140. The state-run Al Ba’ath newspaper blamed those blasts on “terrorists supported by foreign powers which finance and arm them”, a dig at Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which have spoken out in favour of providing weapons to the rebels.
Aleppo and Damascus have been spared most of the violence so far in a year of escalating conflict, and are seen as being more loyal to the regime that Homs and Idlib, which have been attacked with tanks and artillery. The state media said that the explosions were an attempt to disrupt the humanitarian mission and Kofi Annan’s efforts to find a political solution to the fledgling civil war.
The former UN chief, who held talks last weekend with President Assad, is to send a team of experts from New York and Geneva tomorrow to Syria to assess the grounds for a possible ceasefire and an international monitoring mission.
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Meanwhile, humanitarian experts were due in Syria yesterday from the UN and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation to examine the situation and prepare potential relief efforts. They are due to visit some of the worst-hit areas of the uprising, including Deraa in the south, where the revolution started, as well as Homs, Hamas and the ports of Tartus and Latakia. The UN estimates that almost a quarter of a million people have fled their homes, 30,000 of them crossing into neighbouring countries.
“A daily ceasefire of at least two hours is imperative to allow the evacuation of the wounded,” said Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the Red Cross, before heading to Moscow for talks with President Assad’s main international backer.
Even as humanitarian teams prepared for their mission, government security forces were starting operations around Idlib, Aleppo and Deraa, as well as in Deir Ezzor in the east. Activists said the town of Atareb, near Aleppo, had been shelled for the 33rd straight day.
The security forces killed three civilians, including a 14-year-old boy, in the rebellious area of Jabal al-Zawiya near Idlib, opposition activists said. They said that four soldiers had been killed in clashes in the same area. Rebels also blew up a bridge near Deraa to cut an army supply route, while troops killed a civilian in the town.