BEIRUT (Reuters) ? A suicide bomber killed about 25 people and wounded 46 in Damascus on Friday, Syria's state news agency SANA said, in the third such attack in the Syrian capital in a month.
The blast occurred two days before an Arab League committee was due to discuss an initial report of Arab observers who are checking Syria's compliance with an Arab plan to halt President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on unrest.
The meeting may decide whether to continue the mission or to refer Syria to the United Nations Security Council, perhaps paving the way for some form of international action, a scenario that many Arab countries are keen to avoid.
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said he was sending a message with Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal asking the Syrian government to work to halt the violence.
Syrian state television earlier showed body parts, bloodstains and broken glass from the blast in the central Maidan district, along with people shouting that this was the work of "terrorists." Several riot police shields could be seen in a wrecked bus, which was among several damaged vehicles.
"Immediate information indicates that a suicide terrorist blew himself up at a traffic light in the Maidan neighborhood," state television said. "There are dozens of dead and wounded, mostly civilians."
State television did not immediately confirm the death toll given by SANA and the semi-official Addounia television. Syria bars most independent journalists from the country, making first-hand reporting impossible.
On December 23 at least 44 people were killed by what Syrian authorities said were two suicide bombings that targeted security buildings in the Syrian capital.
Those attacks occurred the day before the arrival in Damascus of the head of the Arab League observer mission.
The League's special committee on Syria is due to meet in Cairo on Sunday to debate the initial findings of the mission, which has been criticized by Syrian activists who question its ability to assess the violence on the ground.
Elaraby, the League's secretary-general, said after meeting Meshaal in Cairo that he had given the leader of the militant Palestinian Islamist group a message for the Syrian authorities "that it is necessary to work with integrity, transparency and credibility to halt the violence that is happening in Syria."
Syria has been racked by a popular uprising against Assad in which the United Nations says more than 5,000 people have been killed. The government says armed "terrorists" have killed 2,000 members of the security forces during the revolt.
FATE OF ARAB MISSION
Arab government sources said on Thursday the League monitors would pursue their mission in Syria, despite criticism from Qatar's prime minister that they had made "mistakes."
Syria, keen to show it is respecting the Arab peace plan, said it had released another 552 people detained during the anti-Assad revolt "whose hands were not stained with blood."
The state news agency SANA said some 4,000 detainees had been freed since November. The Avaaz campaign group says 37,000 people picked up during the revolt are still behind bars.
The monitors began work on the streets on December 26 to try to verify whether the government was keeping its promise to pull troops and tanks out of cities and free thousands of detainees.
Syria, which the Arab League has suspended for failing to honor the plan previously, is a major player in the region and is allied to Iran and the Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah group.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA), an armed opposition force composed mainly of army deserters, condemned the Maidan attack and cast the blame on the Syrian authorities themselves.
"These operations inside Syria are an attempt to terrorize the people and blame groups from the revolution but we stress that this is planned and systematic state terrorism by the security forces of President Bashar al-Assad," FSA spokesman Major Maher al-Naimi said.
An opposition activist, who asked not to be named, suggested that Islamist militants might be involved.
"It seems clear that there is a growing extremist Islamist presence in Syria these days and I think there are hundreds of these extremists willing to fight the regime and blow themselves up in the name of jihad," he said.
"We will be seeing more and more of these explosions in Syria in the coming days, I am sorry to say," he added.
One Damascus resident, who gave her name only as Dima, said the city had been tense even before the blast.
"Some friends who work in the security forces were warning my family since yesterday to stay at home. The streets were empty and only a few people went to pray. There are checkpoints all over Damascus right now, especially at the exits."
Syrian activists say the Arab monitors have had inadequate access to trouble spots and were escorted by Syrian officials, who manipulated them and hid prisoners in military facilities.
Damascus says it has given the monitors all the facilities they needed.
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who chairs the Arab League committee on Syria, said after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York on Thursday that it was the League's first monitoring mission.
"I said we must evaluate the types of mistakes it made and without a shadow of a doubt I see mistakes, even though we went in to observe, not to stop the violence," he said.
Ban's spokesman said the United Nations could help train Arab League observers.
The violence in Syria has raged unabated since the Arab monitors arrived, with scores of people reported killed.
Security forces killed four protesters in Hama on Friday when they shot at people shouting anti-Assad slogans as they emerged from the Amer bin Yasser mosque, activists said. Snipers were posted on rooftops in the Qusoor district, they added.
In Hajar al-Aswad, a suburb of Damascus mostly inhabited by refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, protesters shouted: "The people want the execution of the president."
(Writing by Alistair Lyon, additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120106/wl_nm/us_syria
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