Bomb Attacks Continue on Syrian Government Strongholds

Reuters

People gathered at the scene of a bombing near a government security office in Aleppo on Sunday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A car bomb exploded on Sunday in Aleppo,Syria’s largest city, in a residential neighborhood near a state security office, a day after two similar bombings struck the capital, Damascus, opposition activists and Arab news media reported.
SANA, Syria’s official news agency, said two people were killed and 30 wounded in the bombing. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group in London, said at least three people had been killed and 25 wounded.

The bombing in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub, coupled with the attacks on Saturday in Damascus, which killed at least 27 people, challenges the government’s claims that it is close to restoring order. The uprising that began peacefully last year has been increasingly overshadowed by a growing armed insurgency against state security forces, which seem intent on wiping out resistance to the government.

The bombings join a growing chain of such attacks in cities where President Bashar al-Assad has enjoyed strong support, They are fueling widespread fears that the conflict has now unleashed forces that neither the government nor the opposition fully control.

Syria TV, a state news channel, called the Aleppo bombing a terrorist attack, the same description it used in reporting the assaults in Damascus and a designation that the government often uses to describe an uprising that it has characterized as a foreign-inspired conspiracy. Western intelligence officials have said there are some signs that an Iraqi group of Islamist militants affiliated with Al Qaeda may have had some role in the recent bombing attacks. Antigovernment activists, meanwhile, say that some of the attacks may have been staged by the government itself.

In the capital on Sunday, crowds gathered for memorials to the victims of Saturday’s car bombs, and security forces broke up an opposition march of more than 200 people when protesters began shouting for the overthrow of the government, Reuters reported.

“At first they shouted slogans against violence and the police didn’t do anything, but as soon as they started to call for regime change the police rushed in and started beating people with canes,” said the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, which is a pseudonym he uses for reasons of personal safety.

Syrian opposition activists also said security forces had clashed with rebels in northern and southern Syrian provinces and in suburbs of Damascus.

The New York Times