ALEPPO – At least 48 persons were killed and nearly 100 wounded, most of them soldiers, in a spate of car bombs orchestrated by West, including Canada and US, supported terrorists that blasted the heart of Syria’s second city Aleppo.
“Most of the dead and wounded are regime troops,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing medical sources. A local official reported an initial toll of 37 dead and dozens wounded, many of them critically.
“The toll could rise because many people were badly injured,” a city official told AFP, shortly after three bombs exploded around Saadallah al-Jabiri Square, near a military officers’ club and a hotel.
Two of the blasts hit the area near the club within a minute of each other.
A third car bomb then exploded some 150 metres away in the Bab Jnein district, at the entrance of the Old City neighbourhood of Aleppo.
Near the officers’ club, part of the facade of a hotel was destroyed by the force of the blasts, an AFP correspondent at the scene said, adding that a two-storey cafe collapsed completely.
“We heard two enormous explosions, as though the gates of hell were opening,” Hassan, a 30-year-old man who works in a nearby hotel, told AFP. “I saw thick smoke, and I helped a woman on the pavement whose arms and legs were completely dislocated,” said Hassan.
