Syrian blast kills nine in latest setback for UN ceasefire plans

The blasts, which also tore two large craters in the ground, were the latest setback for United Nations efforts to end Syria’s crisis.

A team of UN observers is already on the ground to salvage a ceasefire that went into effect on April 12 but has been widely ignored by both sides.

UN officials have singled out the regime as the main aggressor in violations of the truce.

The powerful bombs went off in the city of Idlib, an opposition stronghold that government troops recaptured in a military offensive earlier this year.

The state-run news agency SANA said security forces and civilians were among those killed, while state TV said that many of the nearly 100 wounded were civilians.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist network, put the death toll at more than 20 people.

Syria’s pro-government al-Ekhbariya TV aired footage of the aftermath from the blasts, showing smashed cars and twisted debris.

The force of the explosions tore the facade off one multi-storey building, shattered windows in the area and sent debris flying.

Pro-government websites said five buildings were damaged.

Yet again, there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack leading to suspicions that the state itself is behind a spate of recent bombings in order to discredit its opponents.

State media blamed “armed terrorists”, a term it uses for rebels trying to topple the government.

Activists claimed the regime was behind the bombings to discredit the opposition.

The bombers detonated their explosives near a military compound and near the city’s Carlton Hotel, SANA said.

A local activist said the explosions went off within five minutes of each other after daybreak yesterday.

Earlier on Monday, gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades at the central bank and a police patrol in the capital Damascus, wounding four officers and causing light damage to the bank, SANA said.

In another Middle Eastern state gripped by unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring, a court has ordered retrials for a prominent hunger striker and 20 others convicted by a military-led tribunal during an uprising in Bahrain.

The decision, which shifts the cases to Bahrain’s highest appeals court, was seen as a victory for supporters of rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and other opposition figures sentenced last year under martial law-style rules imposed by Bahrain’s rulers.

But there appeared no immediate possibility for the release of the group, which includes some of the top figures in protests by Bahrain’s majority Shiites seeking to break the near monopoly on power held by the Western-backed Sunni dynasty.

At least 50 people have been killed in unrest since February 2011 in the strategic kingdom.

Al-Khawaja’s nearly three-month hunger strike has become a rallying point for demonstrations. It was not immediately clear whether al-Khawaja would continue his hunger strike, which began on February 8 and which, according to his family, brought him close to death.

His wife visited him on Sunday and claimed he was force-fed with tubes and IVs against his will.

Al-Khawaja and seven other top opposition figures were sentenced last year to life in prison by a military court. Six others were sentenced to lesser jail terms and seven activists were convicted in absentia.

The jailed activists have fought the sentences, claiming violations of legal rights and torture.