Mortar attacks, car bombs in Syria kill 54
Print Edition
TWO car bombs exploded in a pro-government neighborhood in the central Syrian city of Homs yesterday, killing at least 40 people just hours after one of the deadliest mortar strikes in the heart of the capital Damascus killed 14.
The attacks came a day after President Bashar Assad declared his candidacy for the June 3 presidential elections, a race he is likely to win amid a raging civil war that initially started as an uprising against his rule.
State news agency SANA said the attack in Homs struck in the Abbasiyeh neighborhood — a predominantly Christian and Alawite area. It said at least 40 people were killed and another 116 wounded.
In Damascus, several mortar shells slammed into the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shaghour in the morning hours, killing 14 people and wounding 86, SANA news agency and state TV reported.
It was one of the deadliest mortar attacks in central Damascus since the conflict began in March 2011.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Homs and Damascus attacks yesterday.
Rebels fighting to oust Assad from power have frequently fired mortars into the capital from opposition-held suburbs. Armed opposition groups have also attacked Syria’s cities with car bombs in the past months. An al-Qaida-linked group has previously claimed responsibility for several car bombs in the capital and other cities.
An official at the Damascus Police Command said that two of the mortar shells landed near a religious school in the capital. Several students who were attending classes at the school were among those killed and wounded in the attack, said the official.
Homs has been the opposition stronghold since the beginning of the uprising against Assad that erupted in March 2011. The city, Syria’s third largest, has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the civil war that followed the initially largely peaceful revolt. The conflict has killed more than 150,000 people, and forced another 2.5 million to flee the country.
Also yesterday, the international chemical weapons watchdog said it will send a team to Syria to investigate recent allegations about the use of chlorine gas in the war.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said in a statement that the Syrian government has agreed to the mission, and will provide security in areas under its control. The OPCW team is expected to depart for Syria soon.
A joint UN-OPCW mission is already in the process of eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. It has removed more than 90 percent of Syria’s declared chemical stockpile.
Meanwhile, four more presidential hopefuls declared their candidacy in Syria’s June 3 presidential election, bringing the total number of registered contenders to 11, state TV said.
Syria’s opposition and its Western backers have criticized the decision to hold presidential elections while the country is engulfed in fighting.
Syria’s Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism, saying the decision was sovereign and warned that “no foreign power will be allowed to intervene” in the process.
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