Bombs hit Damascus as EU leaders meet on Syria

At least five soldiers were killed by a bomb in the Syrian capital on Friday as rebels and security forces clashed nationwide and EU leaders met in nearby Cyprus to discuss boosting aid to civilians. The bomb packed into a motorbike exploded as worshippers were leaving a mosque in the northern district of Rokn Eddin in Damascus, and both state television and the Syrian Observatory for Human rights said it killed five soldiers. "The terrorist attack killed five members of the security forces and injured several others," the state broadcaster said, a toll conformed by the rights watchdog that said at least six others were wounded. State television later reported a car bomb explosion in Damascus near the central law courts, without giving any immediate report of casualties. Witnesses and the rights group also said government forces shelled the southern outskirts of the city and hundreds of soldiers backed by armour stormed the nearby town of Babila, where Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels were entrenched. Witnesses told AFP the city's southern suburb of Tadamun and neighbouring Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk came under heavy shellfire. The Observatory reported that one rebel died in Tadamun, a civilian was killed in Yarmuk and another in the southern neighbourhood of Qadam. Security forces also raided the Al-Qazzaz district of southeast Damascus and rounded up dozens of suspected militants, sparking clashes with rebels, it said. Al-Qazzaz is frequently targeted by swoops aimed at rooting out rebels and activists hostile to President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Thousands of people braved violence and took to the streets across Syria under the slogan "besieged Homs is calling you," in reference to rebel-held areas of the central city that have been encircled by the army for more than three months. In commercial capital Aleppo in the north, one rebel was killed in clashes with the army in the embattled Salaheddin district, the Observatory said. Rebels launched an offensive against Aleppo on July 20 and quickly seized several districts including Salaheddin, but the army later retook the district and other FSA-held areas. Regime forces also bombarded Aleppo's southeast district of Qadi Askar and Hanano in the northeast, the Britain-based Observatory said. Elsewhere, two children were killed when Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border was shelled, and two rebels were killed by mortar fire in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, it said. In the northwest province of Idlib, scores of homes were destroyed by shelling, while in Homs province, a child was killed in an air strike on rebel-held Rastan and three civilians died in the town of Talbisseh. At least 38 people, most of them civilians, were killed nationwide on Friday, according to the Observatory, which obtains its information from activists, doctors and other sources. The bodies of 16 men were found in Harasta in Damascus province, some bearing signs of torture, the Observatory said, a day after residents recovered 45 bodies in two towns on the outskirts of the capital. A total of at least 153 people were killed nationwide on Thursday -- 83 civilians, 24 rebels and 46 soldiers, the Observatory said. The conflict has claimed a total of more than 26,000 lives since it erupted in mid-March 2011, according to Observatory estimates. Amid the mounting carnage, the European Commission warned that the conflict in Syria is worsening and announced another 50 million euros ($63 million) in humanitarian aid to civilians. It brings the total available from the Commission to 119 million euros ($152 million) and the EU's contribution in all to 200 million euros, or half of all international help offered so far. The announcement comes as EU foreign ministers held informal talks in Cyprus with Syria and Iran's controversial nuclear programme top of the agenda. "Humanitarian needs are rising rapidly," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in the resort of Paphos. "We need additional contributions to the human effort urgently. I want to put the proposal to my colleagues that other EU nations need to do more." The latest aid is aimed at reaching the 200,000 refugees massed in neighbours Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq as well as the 1.2 million people displaced inside Syria itself. Hague said in a letter sent to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton ahead of the talks that the European Union needed to play a bigger role in resolving the crisis in Syria, which threatened to destabilise the region. His counterparts from France and Italy, Laurent Fabius and Giulio Terzi, said in a separate letter to Ashton that the Syrian crisis had reached "a turning-point" and that the days "of this rotten regime are numbered." Like Hague, they said: "How the post-Assad Syria looks will affect the stability of the entire Middle East." The United Nations refugee agency in Geneva said on Friday it would more than double aid to people displaced inside Syria. "UNHCR's share of the budget in a revised Syria Humanitarian Response Plan being presented to donors this morning is more than doubling to $41.7 million," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said. Peter Maurer, the new head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said in Geneva after a three-day visit to Syria he received positive commitments from Assad, but stressed those promises needed to be tested in coming weeks. Maurer told reporters Assad "showed his commitment to work on many of the points I brought forward to him as obstacles to the work of the ICRC."