Dozens killed in attacks in Damascus and Homs

At least 50 people have been killed and scores wounded in a series of attacks in Syria.

A car bomb killed 36 people in the central city of Homs, while a series of mortar shells slammed into central Damascus, killing at least 14 more.

The attacks came a day after president Bashar Assad announced his candidacy for the June 3rd presidential election, a race he is likely to win amid a raging civil war that started as an uprising against his rule.

The car bombing in Homs, in a predominantly Alawite district, wounded more than 85 people, most of them civilians. Syrian state TV said the car bomb exploded near the Zahra district, causing “a large number” of casualties.

Earlier in Damascus, four shells struck the predominantly Shia neighbourhood of Shaghour, according to the official Sana news agency.

State TV said 14 people were killed and 86 wounded.

An official at Damascus Police Command said two of the mortar shells landed near a religious school. Several students who were attending classes were among those killed and wounded in the attack, said the official.

No one immediately claimed the attack but Syria’s rebels have frequently fired mortars into the capital from opposition-held suburbs.

Sana blamed the attacks on terrorists - a term used by Assad’s government for rebels fighting to oust him.

Many of the opposition-held neighbourhoods around Damascus have been under a crippling government blockade for months, with no food and medicine allowed to reach trapped civilians inside.

Britain-based opposition activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 17 people were killed.

The group, which tracks the conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said the death toll is likely to rise because of the many wounded.

Earlier, an international rights organisation accused Assad’s forces of indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure with crude bombs in rebel-held districts of the northern city of Aleppo.

Human Rights Watch said its staff had documented 85 locations in Aleppo’s opposition-held districts that government aircraft shelled with barrel bombs — makeshift, shrapnel-packed explosive devices rolled out of helicopters.

Agencies