International
SANA/Handout/Reuters
Two car bombs exploded Wednesday in a government-held district of Syria's battleground city of Homs, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100, state media said.
The blasts hit a commercial street inhabited mostly by members of President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect in the city, where government forces have been imposing a heavy siege on rebel-controlled districts.
Syria's uprising, which began with largely peaceful protests against Assad's rule in March 2011, has since evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting predominantly Sunni Muslim opposition forces against an Assad government that is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group that monitors violence on both sides through a network of sources in Syria, said the dead might have included some pro-government gunmen.
The conflict has left over 150,000 people dead and forced millions to flee their homes.
Homs, a city of about 1 million, has shown great sympathy for the opposition since the early days of the uprising. The city was once known as "the capital of the Syrian revolution" before government forces captured large parts of once opposition-held neighborhoods such as Baba Amr and Khaldiyeh.
The state news agency SANA said one car blew up near a sweetshop in a busy street, and about half an hour later another car exploded about 100 yards away "in order to inflict the biggest numbers of casualties among citizens."
SANA said that the wounded included its photographer in Homs, Syria's third-largest city, and that the blasts went off in the Karm el-Loz neighborhood. It said the explosion that struck a busy street also wounded 107 people.
It said the dead and wounded in the explosions included women and children. Syrian TV showed several shops and cars on fire. Bloodied people could be seen being carried on stretchers into ambulances.
"As ambulances and fire engines were working in the first site, the second blast went off, increasing the number of casualties," a witness in the city told The Associated Press. The man, who asked that his name not be given for fear of reprisals, said he counted eight bodies of people killed in the second blast.
Wire services
UN says that lack of rain could add to the millions of Syrians already in need of food aid.
Dutch Jesuit priest Francis Van Der Lugt dedicated his life to bettering the lives of Syrians of all stripes.
The crisis has overwhelmed the small country’s medical and social services, as well as its education system, UN says.
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