Air raids, bombs rock Damascus after truce failure

Damascus, Oct 29: Explosions shook Syria's capital on Monday, Oct 29 as warplanes launched their heaviest air raids yet and two car bombs struck, with the UN-Arab League peace envoy saying the conflict was going from bad to worse. The air raid blasts, heard coming from several outlying districts, rattled windows in the city centre and were among the most intense in Damascus since the beginning of Syria's 19-month conflict, an AFP correspondent said.

They were followed by two car bombings in and around the capital. The first struck the predominantly Christian and Druze area of Jaramana, just outside Damascus, killing 11 people, according to state news agency SANA. The second hit several hours later in the southern Al-Hajar Al-Aswad district, which has seen heavy fighting, causing an unknown number of casualties, state television reported.

The violence came as world powers looked to pick up the pieces of a failed effort for a Muslim holiday ceasefire, with international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in Moscow and due in China this week as he prepares to present new ideas to the UN Security Council. "I have said and it bears repeating again and again that the Syrian crisis is very very dangerous, the situation is bad and getting worse," Brahimi, who will travel to China on Tuesday and Wednesday, said after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

On the final day of the four-day Eid al-Adha holiday, the Syrian military launched more than 60 air strikes around the country, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

PTI