46 killed in double bombing in Syria
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A DOUBLE bombing killed at least 46 people in Syria’s Homs yesterday, as United States Secretary of State John Kerry said a provisional deal had been reached on the terms of a cease-fire.
World powers have been pushing for a break in fighting that was meant to go into effect on Friday, but have struggled to agree how to implement it.
Violence has intensified on the ground, with the double car bomb blasts hitting the Al-Zahraa neighborhood of the central city of Homs yesterday morning.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 46 people had been killed and dozens wounded.
State TV broadcast footage from the scene, showing emergency workers carrying a charred body on a stretcher past shops shorn of their fronts, and mangled vehicles.
Homs has regularly been targeted in bomb attacks, including last month when a double bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed 22 in the Al-Zahraa neighborhood.
The district’s residents are mostly Alawites, the minority sect of Syria’s ruling clan, including President Bashar al-Assad.
Most of those killed have been civilians.
The bombings came as international powers worked for a cessation of hostilities.
Kerry said yesterday he had spoken with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and agreed an initial basis on how to implement a cease-fire.
“We have reached a provisional agreement that could begin in the coming days,” he said in Amman.
“It is not yet done and I anticipate that our presidents, President (Barack) Obama and President (Vladimir) Putin, may well speak somewhere in the next days or so in order to try to complete this task,” he added.
World powers proposed the truce just over a week ago as part of a plan that also included expanded humanitarian access, in a bid to pave the way for a resumption of peace talks.
The talks, which collapsed earlier this month in Geneva, were scheduled to resume on Thursday, but the United Nation’s envoy on Syria has already acknowledged that date is no longer “realistically” possible.
On Saturday, a key opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said it would agree a temporary truce only if government backers halted fire.
HNC chief Riad Hijab said any cease-fire must be reached “with international mediation and with guarantees obliging Russia, Iran and their sectarian militias and mercenaries to stop fighting.”
“There will not be a truce unless fighting stops simultaneously on the part of all the belligerents, sieges are lifted, humanitarian aid is delivered to those in need, and prisoners are released,” Hijab said.
Assad meanwhile told Spain’s El Pais newspaper that he was “ready” for a cease-fire, but said it should not be exploited by terrorists.
Moscow is a key architect of the proposed truce, but has shown little sign so far that it plans to rein in its air campaign.
On Saturday, it said it will continue “to provide assistance and help to the armed forces of Syria in their actions against terrorists.”
Tensions meanwhile have been rising between Russia and opposition-backer Turkey, which has been alarmed by both the government’s Russian-backed advances and a major operation by Kurdish-led forces in Aleppo.
The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and their Arab partners have in recent days seized key territory from rebel forces in Aleppo, prompting Turkish anger and shelling of their positions.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday defended his country’s fight against the YPG as “legitimate defense” after international calls for Ankara to halt its military action in Syria.
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