Syrian state
television said four people were killed in an explosion in Damascus on Sunday
in an attack it described as "terrorism".
Damascus residents said the explosion
occurred near the army and air force headquarters in Mahdi bin Barakeh neighborhood
in the Abu Rmmaneh district. Video footage from activists showed plumes of
white smoke rising from the area.
Syrian warplanes and ground
forces pounded the country's largest city Aleppo with bombs and mortar rounds
on Saturday as soldiers clashed with rebels in its narrow streets, activists
said on Sunday.
Activists also said rebels
captured an air defense facility in the east of the country near the border
with Iraq, where opposition forces have claimed advances over the past days.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said the clashes in Aleppo were concentrated in several tense
neighborhoods Hanano, Bustan al-Qasr,
Sukkari and Maysar. It reported injuries and damage to buildings.
Meanwhile, Syria's state news
agency reported that a car bomb near a Palestinian refugee camp in a suburb of
the nation's capital has killed at least 15 people.
SANA says the explosion in the
Damascus suburb of al-Sbeineh late Saturday also wounded several people and
caused heavy damage to buildings in the area.
It blamed the blast on an
"armed terrorist group," the term it uses to describe the rebel Free
Syrian Army seeking to topple Syria.
International positions
Syria's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jihad Makdissi said that Damascus will help the new UN envoy Akhdar
Ibrahimi “to make his mission succeed for the sake of the country”.
Meanwhile, a top international official declared
that the Algerian diplomat will visit Damascus next Saturday to meet with
President Bashar Assad.
In this context, the Arab League’s former
Secretary General Amro Moussa warned against moving the armed clashes from
Syria into Jordan, noting that the Lebanese became “experts in dealing with
such incidents”.
For his part, Jordan's King Abdullah II reiterated his country’s position, calling for a political
solution for Syria’s crisis which puts an end for violence and bloodshed,
according to a statement issued by the Jordanian
Royal Court
AP/REUTERS/LBCI
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