2 Security Complex Car Bombings Kill Dozens, Syria Says

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Powerful car bombs exploded outside two security headquarters in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday, killing 28 people by official count and signaling that emboldened forces seeking the government’s overthrow can strike at the very seat of its power. Multimedia TimesCast | Syrian Government Sites Hit Related The Lede Blog: Crisis in Syria Looks Very Different on Satellite Channels Owned by Russia and Iran (February 10, 2012) The Lede Blog: Tracing the Weapons of Bashar al-Assad (February 10, 2012) 4 Diplomats From Syria Are Expelled by Germany (February 10, 2012) Libya: Syrian Diplomats Ejected (February 10, 2012) Dozens More Die in Syrian Violence, Activists Say (February 10, 2012) World Twitter Logo. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors Enlarge This Image Bassem Tellawi/Associated Press On a government tour for reporters after bombings in Aleppo, Syria, debris was strewn under portraits of former President Hafez al-Assad, left, and his son, President Bashar al-Assad. The blasts, about two minutes apart, shattered the calm of a Muslim Sabbath morning and nearly 11 months without significant violence in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital. A combination of military and police personnel, as well as civilians, including children, were killed outside a military security headquarters and a police compound, according to a Ministry of Health statement on state television. The attack in Aleppo signaled another escalation in a crisis that began 11 months ago, as the government and the opposition hardened their resolve to use force and diplomatic efforts continued to fail. On Friday, as government forces pressed an unrelenting offensive against the city of Homs, demonstrations edged close to the center of the capital, Damascus, pushing antigovernment action into new territory. In Aleppo, a bastion of government support, the dual explosions wounded about 235 people, state television said, 14 of them critically. State television repeatedly broadcast images of disemboweled victims lying amid jumbled concrete wreckage. One of the buildings appeared flattened and the other was a rose-colored, five-story expanse of shattered windows and cracked masonry. In the absence of a negotiated or diplomatic solution after the latest attempt failed in the United Nations Security Council last Saturday, and with cities and towns across the country besieged by government tanks, the rise of an armed insurgency has gained momentum. Though it was unclear who was responsible for the bombings in Aleppo, or similar attacks in Damascus in December and January, it seemed that Syria was facing the kind of violence it had long been accused of supporting in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon. In Washington, analysts were looking seriously at the possibility that Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq was responsible for Friday’s attack in neighboring Syria. “It comes as no surprise that Al Qaeda’s Iraq affiliate — through its networks in Syria — might attempt to seem relevant by going after the Assad regime,” said an American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the assessment contained classified information. “It is opportunism, plain and simple.” Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of a recent book on Syrian-American relations, said, “This is the regime’s foreign policy coming back to bite it.” The bombings in Damascus claimed 70 victims. Like those in Aleppo, they bore the hallmarks of attacks carried out by Sunni extremist groups, experts said. The government has always argued that it was fighting foreign terrorists, a charge dismissed as propaganda by the Syrian activists leading the uprising. But the attacks on Friday suggest that now foreign fighters may indeed be jumping into the conflict in response to the vicious government crackdown, which human rights groups say has left about 6,000 people dead, experts said. “Clearly the gloves are coming off,” Mr. Tabler said. “You cannot have the shelling of Homs for six days without someone hitting back.” Diplomats and analysts are quick to point out that although this attack and the earlier ones in Damascus bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, there is no indication of an organized branch of the organization like those in Iraq, Yemen or North Africa. Syria is a patchwork of religious sects and ethnic minorities, with some extremists pushing the Sunni majority toward a sectarian war against the Alawite minority that has ruled the country for 40 years. In the 1970s and 1980s, Aleppo was the scene of running battles between the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and the government of President Hafez al-Assad, father of the current president, Bashar al-Assad. But there was no sign that the attack Friday amounted to a resurrection of that fight, since the Muslim Brotherhood ranks were decimated and have never been rebuilt, the analysts and diplomats said.