BEIRUT (AP)
-- A car bomb exploded near a mosque north of the Syrian capital as
worshippers emerged from Friday prayers, killing at least 30 people,
causing part of the building's roof to collapse and littering the street
with smoldering debris, activists said.
In
Damascus, the United Nations said its team of weapons experts currently
in Syria will investigate seven sites of alleged chemical attacks in the
country, four more than previously known. The announcement came a day
after the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council agreed on a
resolution to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons.
Friday's
blast, which struck outside the al-Sahel mosque in the town of Rankous,
also wounded dozens of people, most of them civilians, according to the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It put the death
toll at at least 30, and said was not clear whether the mosque was the
intended target.
Mohammed Saeed, an activist
in the eastern Damascus suburb of Douma, and the Observatory's director
Rami Abdul-Rahman both said the town is held neither by the rebels nor
by the regime in Syria's civil war. Abdul-Rahman said residents have an
agreement with the rebels not to bring weapons into Rankous in order to
avoid government shelling.
Saeed, who is in
contact with activists in Rankous, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north
of Damascus, said residents held funerals for some of those killed in
the bombing in line with Islamic tradition that calls for prompt burial.
As people marched in one funeral, several rockets fired by government
troops fell nearby, wounding some of the mourners, he said.
Car
bombs, shelling and airstrikes have become common in the civil war,
which has killed more than 100,000 people and driven another 7 million -
around a third of the country's pre-war population - from their homes
since March 2011. The conflict has heavily damaged cities and Syria's
social fabric as it has taken on increasingly dark sectarian overtones,
pitting a primarily Sunni Muslim rebel movement against a regime
dominated by President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect - an offshoot of
Shiite Islam.
Amateur video posted online
showed civilians and men with guns sorting through the smoldering
wreckage of the bombing. Smoke still hung over the blast site, while a
portion of the mosque's roof had collapsed. The video's narrator accused
Assad's regime of carrying out the bombing and used a pejorative term
for Shiites.
The video appeared genuine and corresponds to other Associated Press reporting of the events depicted.
The
Syrian state news agency accused the opposition of being behind the
blast, saying "terrorists" detonated the bomb after a disagreement over
divvying up weapons and ammunition. The government calls those trying to
overthrow it "terrorists."
The fighting has
shown no sign of abating and could complicate the mission of U.N.
chemical weapons investigators who are back in Syria this week.
The
U.N. office in Damascus said the team, which returned Wednesday, will
visit seven sites that have been found to "warrant investigation" and
are continuing to work "on a comprehensive report that it hopes will be
ready by late October."
The team initially
visited Syria last month to investigate three alleged chemical attacks
this year. But just days into the visit, the rebel-held Damascus suburb
of Ghouta was hit by a chemical attack, and the inspectors turned their
attention to that case. The inquiry determined that the nerve agent
sarin was used in the Aug. 21 attack, but it did not assess who was
behind it.
Among the new sites the team plans
to investigate is the northern town of Khan al-Assal, outside the city
of Aleppo. Assad's government and Syrian rebels have traded accusations
of chemical weapons use in a March 19 attack.
The
team also plans to look into allegations of chemical agents being used
in the Damascus neighborhood of Jobar, the northern town of Saraqeb, the
Sheik Maksoud neighborhood of Aleppo and three other sites.
The
visit coincides with a sharp uptick in fighting in northern Syria
between al-Qaida's Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and more
moderate rebel factions associated with the Free Syrian Army, the
loose-knit collection of rebel brigades backed by the U.S. and its
allies.
The infighting, which saw ISIL expel
more mainstream rebels from areas near the Turkish border last week, has
threatened to further divide opposition forces already outgunned by
Assad's troops.
The Observatory said ISIL has
given the FSA-affiliated Northern Storm Brigade until Saturday evening
to hand over their weapons and "repent." In turn, the Northern Storm
Brigade accused ISIL fighters of abandoning the fight against Assad, and
promised "an all-out war in Aleppo and its suburbs" against the
al-Qaida-linked fighters.
---
Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.
---
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