DAMASCUS, Syria — Two car bombs exploded Wednesday in a government-held district of Syria’s battleground city of Homs, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 100, state media said.
The blasts hit a commercial street inhabited mostly by members of President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect in the central city, where government forces have been imposing a heavy siege on rebel-controlled districts.
Syria’s uprising, which began with largely peaceful protests against Assad’s rule in March 2011, has since evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting predominantly Sunni Muslim rebels against an Assad government that is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Homs, a city of about 1 million, has shown sympathy for the opposition since the early days of the uprising. The city was once known as “the capital of the Syrian revolution” before government forces captured large parts of once rebel-held neighborhoods.
State news agency SANA said one car blew up near a sweets shop in a busy street, and about half an hour later another car exploded about 100 yards away “in order to inflict the biggest numbers of casualties among citizens.”
SANA said the wounded included its photographer in Homs, adding that the blasts went off in the Karm el-Loz neighborhood. It said the explosion that struck a busy street also wounded 107 people. It said the dead and wounded in the explosions included women and children.
Syrian TV showed several shops and cars on fire. Bloodied people were seen being carried on stretchers into ambulances.
“As ambulances and fire engines were working in the first site, the second blast went off, increasing the number of casualties,” a witness in the city told The Associated Press.
The man, who asked that his name not be given for fear of reprisals, said he counted eight bodies from the second blast.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blasts killed 21 people, including children. It added that the number “is expected to rise” because some of the wounded are in critical conditions.
The blasts in Homs came hours after Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters captured the last major town in the Qalamoun region near the border with Lebanon after weeks of intense fighting.
Syrian TV and Lebanon’s Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar station said the town of Rankous fell earlier Wednesday, depriving the rebels of their last major base in the rugged area.
