Powerful Car Bombs Kill at Least 25 in Aleppo, Rebel Army Blames Regime
Two powerful car bombs targeting security posts ripped through Syria's second city of Aleppo on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding 175 as the Free Syrian Army blamed the regime for the attacks.
State television said "armed terrorist groups" carried out the attacks, the first in Aleppo since the outbreak of an uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad almost a year ago.
It said a "suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives" carried out one of the attacks on a police station, flattening a nearby food distribution center. The second bombing targeted an intelligence base.
The report showed mangled bodies in pools of blood in the street outside rows of shattered buildings, and deep craters in the ground.
Emergency workers held up body parts, including hands, feet and a torso which they placed in black trash bags.
"The number of martyrs who have been transported to hospital in Aleppo have so far reached 25 dead and 175 wounded as a result of the terrorist attacks," the health ministry said, as quoted by state television.
A spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army blamed the regime of Assad for carrying out the two deadly car bomb attacks.
"This criminal regime is killing our children in Homs and carrying out bomb attacks in Aleppo to steer attention away from what it is doing in Homs," said Colonel Maher Nouaimi told Agence France Presse.
He was referring to a weeklong blitz by government forces on the central protest city of Homs, where at least 400 people have been killed, according to activists.
Later on Friday, Syria's government blamed the twin blasts on "armed terrorist gangs" backed by Arab and Western nations, in a letter sent to the U.N. secretary general, the U.N. Security Council, the Arab League and other organizations.
"Certain countries in the region are behind a propaganda campaign against Syria and are harboring armed terrorists for so-called humanitarian reasons," the foreign ministry wrote in the letter, according to SANA state news agency.
Aleppo, a northern commercial hub, has been largely spared the unrest that has rocked Syria since last March, leaving more than 6,000 people dead according to rights groups.
Source: Agence France Presse
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