28 killed, 235 wounded in Aleppo bomb blasts

EU to slap more sanctions on Syria Saudi Arabia circulated a draft resolution backing an Arab peace plan for Syria among members of the UN General Assembly on Friday after a similar text was vetoed in the Security Council last week by Russia and China, diplomats said.
The new draft appeared as two advisers to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon repeated a warning that Syrian government attacks on civilians could amount to crimes against humanity.
Like the failed council resolution, the assembly draft “fully supports” the Arab League plan floated last month, which among other things called for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to step aside to help end 11 months of violence in the country.
There are no vetoes in the General Assembly. The 193-nation body’s resolutions have no legal force, unlike those of the Security Council, but were the Syria text to pass it would add to pressure on Assad and his government.
The assembly is due to discuss Syria on Monday, when it will be addressed by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay. Diplomats said the resolution was not expected to be voted on then, but that there could be a vote later next week.
The assembly draft, seen by Reuters, broadly follows the one voted down in the council. While calling for an end to violence by all sides, it lays blame primarily on the Syrian authorities, whom it strongly condemns for “continued widespread and systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
The draft urges accountability for those guilty of human rights violations, but makes no specific mention of the International Criminal Court, to which Pillay has said Syrian officials should be sent. Only the Security Council can refer Syria to the court - an unlikely move given its divisions.
In one addition to the council text, the assembly draft invites Secretary-General Ban to appoint a special envoy for Syria - a proposal that Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby put to the U.N. chief earlier this week.
In a statement, Francis Deng, Ban’s adviser on prevention of genocide, and Edward Luck, his adviser on the responsibility to protect, said they were alarmed by Syrian security forces’ “indiscriminate fire” on densely populated areas of the city of Homs.
Repeating a warning from last July, they said such attacks could constitute crimes against humanity under international law. “The presence of armed elements among the population does not render attacks against civilians legal,” they said.
On Friday, a Western diplomat said the Arab League is likely to launch a 'Friends of Syria' coalition and appoint a special envoy to Syria at a meeting this weekend.
The diplomat also said that Iranians were “on the ground,” giving technical help to Syrian intelligence services, and warned that Assad’s regime had yet to use “many levels of violence.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomat said that “it looks like they’re preparing to appoint a special envoy" at the Arab League meeting which is due on Sunday. "We encourage that and look forward to working with whoever they nominate," he added.
“It looks like there may be a proposal for a 'Friends of Syria, group or some such group to be decided on by the Arab League.”
In Paris, French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero confirmed the reports.
Yesterday, twin explosions ripped through security compounds in Syria's largest city, Aleppo, bringing the country's widening conflict to a commercial hub that had until now remained largely peaceful .
No one claimed responsibility for the blasts at a military-intelligence headquarters and police station, which Syria's state news agency SANA said killed 28 people and wounded 235.
According to SANA, Syrian Ministry of Interior issued a statement on Friday, in which it said that after the escalation of instigation campaigns and foreign logistic and media support to armed terrorist groups, the city of Aleppo was the target of two terrorist bombings on Friday morning carried out by two suicide bombers in cars, martyring 28 and injuring 235 including military personnel, civilians and children, some of which are in critical conditions.
"At 9 AM on Friday morning, a terrorist bomber driving a whit microbus with a fake license plate carrying the number 475475-Syria broke through the security barrier at the entrance of a law-enforcement department in the crowded area of Al-Arkoub, blowing himself up," the statement said, adding that 11 were killed in the attack and 130 were wounded, both civilians and law-enforcement personnel.
The statement said that a few minutes later, another suicide bomber driving a white microbus blew himself up while trying to break into the military security branch in New Aleppo area, claiming 17 lives and wounding 105 people including military personnel, civilians and even children who were in the park near the branch.
Both bombings caused significant damage to nearby buildings and cars, and the first explosion left a crater two meters deep, the statement added.
The Ministry's statement said that the authorities immediately arrived at the scene and collected evidence which are being analyzed to identify the terrorists and the owners of the human remains found at the site and identify the type of explosives used in this cowardly terrorist act.
Interior Ministry affirmed that such terrorist acts will not dissuade the authorities from fulfilling their duty of preserving security and order, uprooting terrorism, and pursuing every criminal who dares to tamper with the security of the country and its citizens.
The Ministry also held the regional and international forces and countries which support terrorist groups and provide them with funds and weapons responsible for the Syrian blood which is being shed every day in several Syrian cities.
The Ministry called upon citizens to continue reporting any suspicious activities and provide any information on terrorist activities to the authorities.Earlier, the Syrian Ministry of Health said in a statement that the death toll of the twin terrorist bomb blasts which hit Aleppo city on Friday rose to twenty-eight martyrs and 235 wounded, including soldiers, civilians and children.
Minister of Health Wael Al-Halki said that the toll is poised to rise due to the critical condition of some of the injured and the ongoing rescue operations, hailing the people of Aleppo who rushed to donate blood, SANA reported.
He affirmed that all medical cadres at state and private medical hospitals joined their work so as to serve their national and humanitarian duty in saving the lives of the injured, adding that the Ministry has a strategic storage of medicine necessary for emergency cases.
Later, the Health Minister visited the injured and wounded victims of the terrorist bombings in Al-Razi Hospital and checked on them, with the medical staff briefing him on their conditions.
During the visit, the Minister said that medical establishments in Aleppo governorate have been on alert since Friday morning and that all their resources, staff and emergency services were employed to help the victims of the bombing, lauding the people of Aleppo and residents in the city for rushing to donate blood for the victims.
Meanwhile on Friday, the European Union slapped tighter economic sanctions against Syria, have said. EU government representatives have endorsed three new measures, including an assets freeze against the central bank, a ban on Syrian phosphate exports and a prohibition on trading gold and gems.
The 27-nation bloc accounts for 40 per cent of Syrian phosphate exports.The EU is aiming to give the final go-ahead for the sanctions at a meeting of foreign ministers on February 27. Germany has also proposed a ban on commercial flights between Syria and Europe.
Such a measure "has little chance of being adopted," a European diplomat said. A flight ban could cause problems for the evacuation of EU citizens if the violence in Syria deteriorates. More Syrians may also be added to a list of people facing an EU travel ban and assets freeze, with nearly 150 people and entities are already under EU sanctions.
Meanwhile, the opposition Syrian National Council, an umbrella body grouping parties in revolt against President Bashar Al-Assad's regime, expects to be recognised within days by several Arab states.
Currently meeting in Qatar - which is incidentally seing anti-Assad protests - under its leader Burhan Ghalioun, the SNC is hopeful that it will win a diplomatic breakthrough on Sunday at meetings of the Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council in Cairo.
The council, which runs the FSA, and 22-member league along with the United States, Turkey and other European nations, have all called for Assad's exit and are pressing to form a group to tighten sanctions on the Assad regime and get humanitarian aid to attacked Syrians.
The nine-member Gulf Cooperation Council is to meet Sunday to address the Syrian crisis.
Six council members -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- withdrew their ambassadors from Damascus and expelled Syria's envoys Tuesday.
Libya is currently the only country that recognises the SNC as the official representative of the Syrian public. The Gulf states along with Western countries decided on Monday to expel Syrian ambassadors from their capitals.
The Vice President of Planning and Policy in the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) Abdullah Turkmani also denied rumours that the Paris-based Ghalioun threatened to resign from the presidency of the Council.
In a statement to Arabstoday from Tunisia, he explained: “There is an agreement to change the presidency of the Council every three months.”
The SNC leader said: "The success of the revolution will not be achieved by the fall of Bashar Al-Assad , but by establishing a democratic system as an alternative. Toppling a dictator is very much easier than building the state."
While the crackdown continues, Syria's second city of Aleppo was rocked by explosions on Friday morning, killing at least 28 and injuring 235.
State television said two explosions had taken place and reported a number of casualties, including soldiers. It blamed the attack on “armed terrorist gangs.”
Syrian state news agency SANA said one of the blasts targeted a military intelligence centre and the other a centre for the security forces.
The television said a "suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives" carried out one of the attacks on a police station, flattening a nearby food distribution centre.
The blasts were the first in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, which has been relatively quiet since the uprising against Assad's regime erupted in March. Aleppo, which is close to the Turkish border, is an economic powerhouses.
The state-run SANA news agency said the explosions were "terrorist attacks" and had caused "deaths and injuries." It was not immediately clear what may have been behind the explosions
Activists however hit back at the regime's claims and said the opposition would never target residential areas. An FSA spokesperson said that though the attacks on security installations were "legitimate targets" any civilian deaths were at the hands of the regime.
Activists are also claiming that regime forces are firing at civilians in the city. Syrian activist network the "Local Coordination Committees" (LCC) said six civilians were killed by security forces on Friday.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP there were three blasts in the northern city, a main commercial hub.
They occurred in the neighbourhoods of Sakhur and Marjeh and the Dawar El-Basel roundabout.
Activists reported Syrian tanks storming the Syrian flashpoint city Homs on Friday morning as soldiers loyal to Assad's regime launched a house-to-house sweep of the area to crush opponents.
Activists say 30 people were killed in the opposition stronghold district of Baba Amr, which has seen some of the worst attacks in recent weeks.
Syrian troops in the meantime sealed off and bombarded a rebel stronghold in Homs.
"The children will die here," Basil Abu Fouad, a resident of Baba Amr, told the British newspaper The Guardian by phone from a basement.
"All the people want is to escape. They can smash this place if they want. We just want to get out of there. But they won't allow us."
Roads in and out of Baba Amr, in southeast Homs, were blocked, preventing the evacuation of children or the wounded, witnesses told The Guardian. Food, water and medicine were running out fast, they said.
More than 110 people were killed in Homs Thursday in the seventh day of heavy bombardment by government forces, opposition groups said, bringing the week's death toll to more than 400 in Syria's third-largest city.
The figures could not be independently confirmed.
The total death toll since the uprising began 11 months ago is said to be more than 6,000.
Homs residents reached on cellphones described a near-constant barrage of heavy artillery and rocket fire pounding a handful of neighborhoods known to be opposition strongholds, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Assad's crackdown was on Thursday blasted by US President Barack Obama as "outrageous bloodshed". UK Prime Minister David Cameron angrily denounced the regime as "hell-bent on killing, murdering an maiming its own citizens".
The work to draft a new Syrian constitution has been completed, officials have said, and submitted to Assad for consideration. The document envisages the introduction of multi-party system. If adopted, it will only allow one seven-year presidential term for the head of state.
The president ordered the formation of a national committee to draft the constitution on October 15 last year. The committee includes 29 lawyers, academics, and public figures.             
Another Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, met with leaders in Beijing.
The group said Thursday the meeting was meant "to convey to Chinese officials the true picture of the need to develop a political program that paves the way to the transitional stage, so as to avert the dangers of a spiral of violence, civil war and foreign military intervention."
China explained its principles and position to the group and called on all sides to immediately stop the violence, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in a briefing cited by the English-language China Daily.
"The Syrian government should earnestly fulfill its promises to start an inclusive reform process that has wide participation, and resolve disputes via talks and consultations," Liu said, adding China was a friend of the Syrian people, the newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, major powers gave a cautious welcome on Thursday to proposals to send a joint Arab League-United Nations mission to monitor Syria’s deadly crackdown on protests.
France said there had to be “guarantees” for the mission. The US and German ambassadors to the United Nations said their countries were studying the idea raised by UN leader Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday.
It was not immediately clear whether the new proposal would need formal Security Council approval but diplomats said it could not work without the backing of the major powers.
Morocco’s UN envoy, Mohamed Loulichki, the Arab representative on the 15-nation council gave implicit backing to the scheme.
“As far as Morocco is concerned any initiative that could help to implement the Arab initiative, which is very comprehensive, is most welcome.”
Assad recently stated that Syria was determined to hold a national dialogue with the opposition and independent figures, saying his government is "ready to cooperate making any effort that can bring stability back in Syria," according to SANA.
Russia blamed the Syrian opposition for the escalating violence, saying it bore full responsibility for the bloodshed as the Kremlin accused the West of being an "accomplice" that pushed the regime's opponents into armed conflict.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the ITAR-Tass news agency the opposition's refusal to enter direct talks with the Syrian government meant it "bears full responsibility for improving the situation". He accused the West of being "accomplices in the process of inflaming the crisis".
He also warned that Russia was ready to follow this month's veto of a draft UN Security Council resolution on the crisis with additional "strong measures" should the West continue to refuse to acknowledge the opposition's role in the crisis.
Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a Security Council resolution — proposed by Arab and European nations — which aimed to back an Arab League plan for Syria.
The League plan calls for the Syrian president to hand over powers to a deputy so new elections can be held.