A combo image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube by the Islamic Front yesterday shows an explosion ripping open the ground and throwing huge quantities of earth and debris dozens of metres into the air after several tonnes of explosives were planted in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint on the northeastern outskirts of the town of Maaret al-Numan, in Syria’s Idlib province.

Reuters

Beirut

About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said yesterday.

Videos and images posted by opposition supporters online showed a massive plume of smoke and earth shooting into the air near a small town as men shouted “Allahu akbar”.

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks against his forces, but the size of the blast, which occurred on Monday, was unusual.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the blast took place outside the town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwestern Idlib province.

At least two officers were among those killed when insurgents from the Islamic Front and the Shields of the Revolution Council set off tonnes of explosives in a tunnel running from the road to the checkpoint, the group said.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in the three-year-old rebellion, which started as a peaceful protest movement and turned into a civil war after a government crackdown.

International powers have been deadlocked over how to resolve the conflict, further complicated by infighting between rebel groups that has killed thousands of fighters this year.

On Monday about 70 rebels were killed in clashes between a former Al Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, and its allies in an eastern province bordering Iraq, the Observatory said.

The fighting, which has intensified in the last few weeks, centres around villages on the outskirts of the city of Deir al-Zor, capital of the oil-producing province of the same name, where rebel groups have been fighting each other for control of oilfields and strategic areas.

The latest clashes have displaced tens of thousands of people in the area over the last few days, the Observatory said. Five civilians were killed in Monday’s fighting, which resulted in the Nusra Front and its allies taking control of the village of Al Sabha, it said.  

Millions have fled their homes in Syria and the government has lost control of swathes of territory across the north and east. Fighting regularly kills over 200 people a day.

The timing of an evacuation of rebels from the central city of Homs under a deal with government forces has not been set and could still take days to arrange, the provincial governor said yesterday.

The withdrawal of the insurgents from Homs - a city once called “the capital of the revolution” - would amount to a major symbolic victory for Assad but has been delayed since a ceasefire was agreed on Friday.

Rebels have held out in the Old City district and several other areas despite being undersupplied, outgunned and subjected to more than a year of siege by Assad’s forces.

Homs governor Talal Barazi said arrangements for any withdrawal would take time and declined to say when it would likely happen.

“The conditions are helpful and the atmosphere is suitable for achieving positive steps toward settlement and reconciliation and the exit of armed groups, but we have not set a date yet,” he told Al Manar television, run by Assad ally Hezbollah.

“The next few days will witness, God willing, steps like this, and we hope there will be a date soon,” he added.

The reasons for the delay were not immediately clear, but the pullout is part of a multifaceted arrangement that also includes allowing food and medical aid into the largely Shia towns of Nubl and Al Zahraa in the northern province of Aleppo which have been besieged by rebels for more than a year.