Aleppo bombings kill as many as 40
A crater from car bomb explosions that hit the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Oct. 3, 2012. At least 40 people were killed and 90 wounded, most of them soldiers, when three car bombs struck the heart of Syria’s second city Aleppo, a monitoring group said.
In the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday bombings killed as many as 40 people and wounded over 90, most soldiers of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
"Five minutes after the first explosion a second bomb exploded. A third exploded 10 minutes after that," a state television reporter said, according to Reuters. "There was a fourth car bomb which exploded before engineering units could defuse it."
The explosions, reportedly car bombs, struck Saadallah Jabri Square, a public area that the New York Times states hosts an officers’ club and government owned hotels where "pro-government militiamen," live.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Syrian's regime-run news organ said 31 people were killed in the explosion.
SANA also published photos of three unidentified men who died in the attack that it says are of rebels fighters dressed in government army issued fatigues.
SANA went on to claim that the men were "equipped with explosive belts," and called them suicide bombers. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also suggested suicide bombers might have been involved in the attack, according to Al Jazeera.
From Beirut, Al Jazeera's Rula Amin said no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks, though the Syrian government suspects the Free Syrian Army.
On Sept. 26 the rebel Free Syrian Army bombed military buildings in the center of Damascus in what one of the deadliest days in the now 18-month civil war. Three hundred and four people died, including 199 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On July 18 a bomb in Damascus killed several high-ranking government security officials, including Assad's brother-in-law and the defense minister.
Activists estimate more than 30,000 people have died in the fighting.
UNHCR, the UN's refugee agency, believes there could be as many as 700,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year.
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