Suicide blast, attacks kill 19 in Syria

A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in eastern Syria on Saturday killing nine people, as US President Barack Obama said the G8 wanted a political transition in the violence-wracked country. The bombing was the first of its kind in Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria's biggest city, since an anti-regime uprising broke out last year, and at least 10 other people were reportedly killed elsewhere in the country.
Among the dead were a woman and her two children gunned down in the northern city of Aleppo, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A "terrorist suicide bomber" used 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of explosives in the attack on the Deir Ezzor neighbourhood of Ghazi Ayyash, said state television.
The powerful explosion left a crater 3.5 metres (yards) deep and damaged buildings within a radius of 100 metres, the channel said. It occurred on a road housing a military and air force intelligence headquarters and a military hospital, according to the Observatory. Images broadcast on state television showed a large bloodstain on the ground, a damaged building and vehicles charred by the blast, as well as smoke rising from the targeted district.
There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing but, as typically happens in such cases, the opposition blamed it on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Elsewhere, a rocket slammed into the ruling Baath party's offices in northern Aleppo province, the Observatory said, a day after unprecedented anti-regime protests in the provincial capital of the same name.
"Unidentified gunmen targeted a Baath party office in Aleppo's Al-Bab town with a rocket-propelled grenade," said the Britain-based watchdog. Immediately after the attack, clashes broke out between the gunmen and guards, but there were no reports of any casualties. In Homs, sniper fire killed a civilian and blasts were heard as shells rained down on the flashpoint central city, the Observatory said.
Saturday's bombing in Deir Ezzor came a day after regime forces foiled a would-be car bombing in the same city, which is about 110 kilometres (70 miles) from the Iraqi border. The government has repeatedly blamed bomb attacks on "armed terrorist groups" and al Qaeda. Syria's UN ambassador has claimed that al Qaeda is operating from parts of neighbouring Lebanon, drawing a rebuttal from Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Miqati who said such remarks "exacerbate" tensions between the two countries.