At least 32 people killed – including army’s top spy – after brazen attacks on security offices in third-largest city.
by Al Jazeera
A series of suicide attacks on military installations in Syria’s government-held city of Homs have killed at least 32 people, including the army’s intelligence chief – a close confidante of President Bashar al-Assad.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that loud explosions and gunfire were heard following the assault in the western city.
“There were at least six attackers and several of them blew themselves up near the headquarters of state security and military intelligence,” Syrian Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP news agency.
The governor of Homs province, Talal Barzani, said there were three blasts in total killing 32 people and wounding more than 20 others.
The Syrian Observatory said 42 people had been killed.
The attacks hit the heavily guarded Ghouta and Mahatta neighbourhoods and security forces locked down the city centre.
Syrian state television said the army’s intelligence chief General Hassan Daabul died and it paid tribute to the “martyrs” in Saturday’s bombings.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, said it was unclear how the assailants could have pulled off such an audacious assault.
“Both areas are heavily guarded by the state police and also military so it was a really big and organised twin attack,” said Simmons.
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, claimed responsibility for the attack.
“We’re also hearing that Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – that is the new name for the al-Nusra Front – is claiming responsibility. That’s according to state TV, which has not been confirmed anywhere else,” Simmons reported.
Homs has been under the full control of the government since May 2014 when rebels withdrew from the city centre under a UN-brokered truce.
But the city has seen repeated bombings since then. Twin attacks killed 64 people early last year.
The attacks come as peace negotiators continue talks for the second day in Geneva over Syria’s six-year-old civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
