Suicide bombing rocks Damascus
Tens of thousands protest across Syria as skepticism rises over UN’S peace deal
DAMASCUS – Tens of thousands protested across Syria on Friday as a deadly suicide bombing rocked the capital, killing 11 people and fuelling growing skepticism over the prospects of a Un-backed peace plan.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people, including a child, were killed as regime forces opened fire to disperse protests.
“Tens of thousands of people protested today in various areas of the country,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based group, told AFP.
He said one protester was killed in the village Daf alShok in Damascus province. Another died in the Sakhur district of northern Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and the child was killed in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.
Three members of the security forces and a deserter were also killed in other clashes across the country, the Syrian Observatory said.
At least 11 people died and 28 were wounded in the Damascus bomb blast that hit as worshippers were leaving weekly Muslim prayers at nearby Zein al-abidin mosque in the central Midan district, state television said.
The report blamed “terrorists,” the term used by President Bashar Assad’s regime to refer to the armed opposition, and said civilians and security force members were among the casualties.
Television footage showed gruesome images, including a severed hand and leg.
The official SANA news agency reported the interior ministry as saying “it will not tolerate the armed terrorist groups and vowed to strike with an iron fist those who are terrorizing citizens.”
A separate blast hit an industrial zone of Damascus where there were no reports of casualties, but three security agents were wounded in an explosion in the coastal city of Banias, the Observatory said.
Assad’s regime has repeatedly blamed “armed terrorist groups” for the violence, and for failing to abide by a putative ceasefire that began on April 12.
Neighbouring Lebanon on Friday intercepted a ship suspected of carrying weapons destined for Syria’s rebels, a Lebanese security official said.
But a U.S. State Department spokesperson said Washington still believed the regime was responsible for “the
“Syrians will take to the streets and the regime will fall.”
WALID AL- BUNNI, SYRIAN OPPOSITION
bulk of the violations” of the ceasefire, warning that it was ready to return to the UN Security Council for action on Syria.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon also said Damascus was in contravention of its commitments under a six-point peace deal by keeping troops and heavy weapons in urban areas, and expressed alarm at reports of population centres being shelled.
Amnesty International said on Friday it had received the names of 362 people reportedly killed in Syria since UN observers were deployed last week to monitor the peace deal.
More than 9,000 people have died since a popular uprising erupted against Assad’s regime in March 2011, the UN says, while non-governmental groups put the figure at more than 11,100.
Opposition figure Walid al-bunni said the peace deal drawn up by Un-arab League envoy Kofi Annan was likely to fail because it obliges Syria to allow free demonstrations.
“If the Annan plan, which provides for peaceful demonstrations, is applied, millions of Syrians will take to the streets and the regime will fall,” he told AFP in Cairo.
Syria’s exiled Muslim Brotherhood urged Ban to acknowledge that Damascus had failed to honour the peace plan and to suspend its UN membership until a transitional government representing the Syrian people is formed.