SANA, via Associated Press
An image released by Syria’s official news agency showed Damascus residents gathering at the scene of a blast on Monday.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria was convulsed by one of the most violent days in months on Monday, with heavy fighting reported around Palestinian neighborhoods in southern Damascus, at least two car-bomb explosions and strikes by government aircraft on numerous rebel targets.
Sharply conflicting accounts emerged from the government and the rebels on the toll from a car bombing near the central city of Hama, with the rebels reporting dozens of soldiers dead and the government saying just two civilians were killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with a network of contacts inside Syria, said that Jabhet al-Nusra, a jihadist organization, and other rebel groups in the region collaborated in a suicide car bombing of a government checkpoint in a village near Hama, killing at least 50 soldiers.
“They targeted one of the biggest checkpoints in the region. It’s a big building where the regime forces were headquartered,” said Ahmad Raadoun, a member of the Free Syrian Army in the Hama suburbs, who was reached via Skype.
Mr. Raadoun, who said he was about 20 miles from the village of Ziyara, where the attack took place, said the bomb caused extensive casualties and other damage in what he described as a “big operation.”
The official news agency, SANA, said the explosion, outside a government building called the Rural Development Center, was orchestrated by terrorist groups and left 2 civilians dead and 10 wounded. The government has repeatedly labeled opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad as terrorist organizations.
The reasons for such divergent accounts could not be immediately ascertained.
Checkpoints in rural areas often serve as rudimentary bases for the government, with large numbers of men and matériel stationed in them to carry the fight across the province.
Another car bombing was reported in Mazzeh 86, a Damascus neighborhood on the slopes below the presidential palace, home to many members of the security forces. The forces are dominated by members of Mr. Assad’s Alawite minority, which controls the country.
The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for that attack, saying in a statement that its fighters had targeted officers as well as members of the armed militias who fight for the government. The statement, posted on Facebook, claimed a large number of casualties but did not give any figures.
The Syrian Observatory said the bomb, which it described as a booby-trapped car that exploded in Bride Square, killed 5 people and wounded more than 30, some of them critically.
Pictures posted on Facebook showed a large column of smoke rising from the area.
Damascus residents reached by telephone said that they were trying to flee the heavy fighting, but that there was so much going on in every direction that they did not quite know where to run.
“There is very, very intense shelling on southern Damascus right now,” said an activist reached by Skype who goes by Abu Qays al-Shami. At least 10 people were killed as government helicopters and tanks blasted the area, he said.
Residents said the fighting had erupted in and around the Yarmouk camp in southern Damascus, the center of Palestinian life in Syria for decades. Many Palestinians have sided with the nearly 20-month-old anti-Assad uprising, but the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a splinter Palestinian group long supported by the government, still backs Mr. Assad. The fighting erupted between the organization and government opponents.
Elsewhere in southern Damascus, government helicopters were shelling the restive neighborhood of Hajjar al-Aswad, a target of frequent attacks in recent weeks, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, an anti-Assad activist group that keeps track of casualties. SANA said five people were killed in Yarmouk, including a woman and three children, when a mortar shell hit a public minibus. The agency blamed terrorist organizations.
In its daily roundup of violence around the country, SANA also said that government forces clashed with opposition groups in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zour and in Aleppo, the northern city that has been a battleground since midsummer.
Activist organizations reported a number of airstrikes around the country.
One extremely graphic video posted from the village of Kafrnabel, near Idlib, shows bloodied victims dumped into a truck in the aftermath of what was described as an aerial assault. A shot of the main street shows flames leaping from vehicles and residents running around in panic. At least five men and one woman died, the Syrian Observatory said, but more victims were believed buried under the rubble. Video accounts cannot be independently confirmed.
At the United Nations on Monday, a top relief official said the organization’s aid effort in Syria “is very dangerous and very difficult.” The official, John Ging, director of operations of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters at a news conference that the United Nations was supplying 1.5 million people in Syria with food and that nearly half is delivered into areas of conflict, but “there are areas beyond our reach, particularly areas under opposition control for quite a long time.”
Syrian Rebels Claim to Kill Dozens of Soldiers
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Syrian Rebels Claim to Kill Dozens of Soldiers
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Syrian Rebels Claim to Kill Dozens of Soldiers
