'At least 100 casualties' as rebel bombs target Syrian army

Bombs explode near barracks and military police HQ in Aleppo, as regime warplanes make fatal strike on housing complex

Share 43 Email Reuters in Amman guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 September 2012 09.33 BST

Free Syrian Army soldiers help a wounded fighter in Aleppo. Photograph: Manu Brabo/AP Two bombs exploded simultaneously on Sunday night next to Syrian army compounds in the northern city of Aleppo, killing and wounding scores of President Bashar al-Assad's forces, residents and opposition activists said. The bombs targeted makeshift barracks and the military police headquarters, situated in two adjacent sealed off districts in the centre of the city, said several residents and opposition campaigners from Aleppo. The state news agency said an explosion near a hospital and a school in the Municipal Stadium district killed 17 people and wounded at least 40. Residents said the facilities were used to house soldiers fighting an 18-month uprising against Assad. "The army had taken over the neighbourhood and emptied it from residents. The hospital was turned into army barracks," said activist Ahmad Saeed.

A woman living near the area said the casualty figure "appeared to be over 100", judging from the number of ambulances ferrying the wounded and dead from the area. The Noble Aleppo brigade of the Free Syrian Army said in a statement it carried out the Muncipal Stadium district attack, killing or wounding 200 troops. It said the bombs were planted inside the buildings in co-operation with a loyalist sympathiser. Syrian warplanes earlier bombed a residential district to the east after rebels overran army barracks there, killing and wounding dozens of people and exacerbating a water shortage in Syria's biggest city after a pipeline burst, activists said. Assad has resorted increasingly to aerial bombardment to keep rebels in check after they took control of residential neighbourhoods and made forays into the centre of Aleppo, Syria's commercial and industrial capital. The uprising has polarised global powers, preventing effective international intervention, and is turning increasingly sectarian with the risk of spillover into adjacent Arab states with similar communal divisions. Insurgent advances have forced Assad to deploy warplanes, major armoured forces and thousands of troops to prevent the fall of Aleppo, which would free up supply lines to the interior of Syria from Turkey where rebels have sheltered. Decisive victory has eluded both sides, with rebels lacking heavy weapons needed to down aircraft and knock out artillery and Assad loath to send conscript troops of questionable loyalty into cities to re-establish dominance on the ground. Instead, government forces have been bombarding cities to try to turn residents against rebels dug in there, according to diplomats following the revolt. Sunday's air raid destroyed a residential complex in the Hananu neighbourhood, one of several in eastern Aleppo under rebel control, opposition activists told Reuters by phone. The death toll was at least five, including one woman, and bodies and wounded people were being dug out from the rubble. Video footage from the area showed scores of people searching and digging in the debris of a flattened building. On-scene details could not be independently verified due to Syria's severe restrictions on international media access. Aerial bombardment had also wrecked a main water pipeline, causing serious shortages of water in Aleppo, activists said. A businessman who went from the north-west of the city to Hananu to bury his grandmother - Aleppo's main cemetery is situated in the district - said the ground was shaking with artillery explosions. "I passed by several (rebel) Free Syrian Army checkpoints. The fighters looked quite relaxed. The army was nowhere to be seen but it was bombing heavily," he said.

In the capital, Damascus, the army continued to shell Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods supportive of the revolt against Assad, whose minority Alawite sect has dominated Syria's power structure for decades. Shelling again struck the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in south Damascus and the adjacent impoverished neighbourhood of Hajar al-Aswad, home to thousands of refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Syrian state media said four people were killed in a "terrorist attack" that targeted a bus in the province of Homs. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said civilians and soldiers were on the bus. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said on Sunday she was pessimistic about closing the gap with Russia on how to defuse the Syrian conflict before world leaders gather for the UN General Assembly later this month. Clinton said she made the case for increasing pressure on Assad in talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at a summit of Asian-Pacific states in Vladivostok over the weekend. "If we can make progress in New York in the run-up to the UN General Assembly, we can certainly try," Clinton told reporters. "But we have to be realistic. We haven't seen eye-to-eye on Syria. That may continue. And if it does continue then we will work with like-minded states to support the Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls." Chinese and Russian leaders restated their firm opposition to what they see as US meddling in Syria, a reference to calls for harsh UN sanctions to isolate Assad, for whom Moscow is Syria's most important ally and arms supplier. "Our US partners prefer measures like threats, increased pressure and new sanctions against both Syria and Iran. We do not agree with this in principle," Lavrov said. Clinton said she would continue to work with Lavrov to see if the UN security council could formally endorse an agreement brokered by the former UN Syria envoy Kofi Annan which envisages a transitional governing authority for Syria. But she added that such a step would only be effective if it carried specific penalties if Assad fails to comply something Russia has repeatedly resisted. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and most Arab nations have sided with their Syrian Sunni coreligionists at the forefront of the revolt. This article was amended on 10 September 2012. It originally conflated two separate events to incorrectly imply that the heavy casualties were a result of the regime air strike on Hananu rather than the rebel bombings of the army bases. This has been corrected.