* State media say 9 dead, activist says over 20
* Blasts target intelligence agencies – activists
* Nearby buildings badly damaged, cars flattened
* Rebels say stepping up bombing campaign
(Updates death toll, adds skiers fired on)
By Oliver Holmes
BEIRUT, April 30 (Reuters) – Nine people including Syrian
military personnel were killed and 100 wounded on Monday in bomb
blasts near security service buildings in Idlib, state media
said, as a bombing campaign intensified against government
targets.
Twin explosions, the latest to disrupt a shaky U.N. truce,
blew fronts off nearby buildings and left craters in roads,
according to images on state television which showed people at
the scene condemning the rebels who are fighting to oust
President Bashar al-Assad.
State television blamed both blasts in the restive
northwestern city on suicide bombers.
A prominent human rights activist said they appeared to
target local headquarters of intelligence services for the air
force and the army, two of the many security agencies that have
helped keep the Assad family in power for four decades.
The activist, at the British-based Syrian Observatory of
Human Rights, put the death toll at over 20. Syria bars most
independent journalists, hindering verification of such figures.
State media said monitors from the United Nations team sent
in to oversee the 18-day-old ceasefire were visiting the scene
in Idlib. Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said the
head of the monitoring mission, Norwegian general Robert Mood,
was being briefed on “violations by armed opposition”.
Official media broadcast video of flattened cars and mangled
corpses lying under tarpaulins. One man, standing amid rubble,
said: “My wife and I were asleep in bed and then there was a
loud explosion. It rocked the whole house and woke us all up. My
wife and I and our children all ran outside.
“Is this the freedom they want? How can it be the fault of
children? How can the innocents be to blame?”
One woman said one of the bombs had been planted by a group
of men who ran away shortly before the detonation. However,
state television later said they were suicide attacks.
The United Nations says security forces have killed 9,000
people in the uprising, which started as peaceful mass protests
inspired by rebellions elsewhere in the Arab world but which is
becoming an increasingly bloody guerrilla insurgency.
Damascus says 2,600 from its forces have died at rebel hands
and has accused the United Nations of turning a blind eye to
“terrorist acts” committed by those fighting for the removal of
Assad, who succeeded his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.
BOMBING CAMPAIGN
Although the rebels are far from a unitary force, their
tactics appear to be shifting from small-scale ambushes on
checkpoints and military patrols to audacious assaults on
infrastructure and symbols of the Assad state.
“We are starting to get smarter about tactics and use bombs
because people are too poor and we don’t have enough rifles. It
is just no match for the army. So we are trying to focus on the
ways we can fight,” said one anti-Assad fighter who claimed to
be in command of a militia unit.
“The rebels are getting better at bomb-making – as you know,
desperation is the mother of invention,” he told Reuters in
neighbouring Lebanon.
On Saturday, gunmen in inflatable dinghies killed several
people in a seaborne assault on a military unit near the port of
Latakia, and militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the
central bank in Damascus on Sunday, causing slight damage.
An Islamist group calling itself al-Nusra Front has claimed
responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least nine
people, most of them security officials, in Damascus on Friday.
.
Also on Friday, authorities in Beirut seized a ship carrying
a large consignment of weapons from Libya, including
rocket-propelled grenades and heavy calibre ammunition, that
could have been smuggled into Syria.
Lebanese security sources said on Monday Syrian soldiers had
fired at a group of four skiers along the mountainous border
after they mistook them for smugglers. One Lebanese skier was
wounded. Two other Lebanese and a Swiss citizen were unharmed.
“HUGE TASK”
U.N. ceasefire monitors are trickling in to Syria, with 30
out of a planned 300 now on the ground. Their Norwegian
commander, Major General Mood, a veteran of previous Middle East
peace missions, acknowledged the huge task awaiting the unarmed
mission but said he was confident it could make headway.
“We will be only 300 but we can make a difference,” he told
reporters on his arrival in the Syrian capital. “Thirty unarmed
observers, 300 unarmed observers, even 1,000 unarmed observers
cannot solve all the problems,” he said.
An activist in the restive central city of Homs, speaking
via Skype, said violence had dropped sharply since the observers
deployed a permanent two-man team there last week.
“There are still violations but the shelling and mortar fire
has stopped,” Karam Abu Rabea said. “We have insisted that the
observers stay in Homs because we know if they leave (the
attacks) will continue.”
Despite the relative calm in Homs, activists said at last 39
people were killed across the country on Sunday, including
civilians, security forces and rebels.
(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon; Writing by Ed Cropley;
Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
