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Blasts, violence rattle Syria over weekend

09 November 2012 22:19 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A booby-trapped car went off Friday in a hotspot suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, leaving at least four people killed, activists said, adding that a jihadist suicide bomber blew himself up at a military checkpoint in another district of the capital, killing 20 soldiers.

The first explosion took place when a car bomb went off at al- Muadamiah suburb in front of the local authority building, killing four people, including a woman, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Video footage appeared online claimed to show great destruction in the surrounding buildings at the blast site.

The area is one of the Damascus suburbs that have been a stage of intense clashes between the government troops and armed rebels.

In another blast Friday, the observatory said, 20 members of the government troops were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a military checkpoint at Ein Tarma suburb of Damascus.

It said the bomber is a member of the shadowy al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-linked group that has recently claimed responsibility for most of the blasts in Syria during the 20-month-old crisis.

Meanwhile, the observatory said the armed opposition killed 20 soldiers after storming a number of governmental establishments in the northern province of Hasaka.

The activists’ claims could not be checked independently as the state media has not reported any of the blasts yet.

In the meantime, an official source on Friday denied as " completely untrue" reports by some satellite TV channels on the bombardment of al-Qouriyeh city in the eastern Deir Ezzor province.

The source, whose remarks were carried by Syrian official news agency SANA, said terrorist groups committed a massacre against a number of people who intended to turn themselves and their weapons in to the authorities in an attempt to hinder efforts exerted to restore security and stability to the region.

Meanwhile, SANA said armed forces on Friday carried out a qualitative operation against terrorists in al-Bab city in the countryside of Aleppo and killed many of them, including Salem Ahmad al-Jumaa, leader of the so-called "al-Zubeir Battalion".

A unit of the armed forces destroyed terrorists’ hideouts and gatherings in al-Houleh in the countryside of Homs, in addition to their cars and equipment.

The operation resulted in the death of a number of terrorists, including a leader of an armed terrorist group, Yousef al-Suleimi, of Saudi nationality, and all his group members.

Moreover, SANA said army units have continued their purge of hot areas in Aleppo and carried out a series of qualitative operations in several areas where they have killed many terrorists.

The operations centered at Hreitan in Aleppo’s outskirts, and Handarat area, where many terrorists, including an Azerbaijan, were killed, it said.

Violence has escalated dramatically in the capital Damascus over the past days with daily explosions and mortar shell firing.