By . Lee Moran . UPDATED: . 19:36 EST, 23 December 2011 . Suicide bombers killed 40 people and wounded more than 100 yesterday in twin blasts that ripped through an upmarket and heavily guarded district of the Syrian capital Damascus. One explosion gouged a 6ft deep crater into the ground. The blasts came a day after an advance team of Arab League observers arrived in the country to monitor Syria’s promise to end its crackdown on protesters demanding the overthrow of President Bashar Assad. Scroll down for video... Carnage: Footage from Syrian state shows a dead body being carried away from the site of a suicide attack outside a security service base in Damascus . Rocked: Syrian security services inspect the entrance of an intelligence agency building targeted by a suicide attack in Damascus . The United Nations said the uprising had left 5,000 dead and thousands more detained. The Syrian authorities immediately pointed the finger at possible Al Qaeda involvement. Within hours, government officials . took the observers to the scene of the explosions outside intelligence . service buildings in the upscale Kfar Sousa district. Mutilated and torn . bodies still lay amid rubble, twisted debris and burned cars. Shell: The wreckage of a car believed to have been used in a suicide attack in Damascus . Blown apart: Syrian state TV shows citizens searching through the rubble at the site of a suicide attack in Damascus . The officials said the outrage backed . their long-time claims that the turmoil is not a popular uprising but . the work of terrorists. A Syrian foreign ministry spokesman said Lebanon . had warned it two days ago that an Al Qaeda cell had entered Syria from . its territory. But an opposition leader raised doubts . over the authorities’ version of the events, suggesting the regime was . pitching its case to the observers. Omar Idilbi of the Syrian National . Council, an umbrella group of regime opponents, called the explosions . ‘very mysterious because they happened in heavily guarded areas that are . difficult to be penetrated by a car’. Bloody: A dead body is carried away from the site of a suicide attack in Damascus . He said: ‘The presence of the . observers pushed the regime to give this story in order to scare the . committee from moving around Syria.’ He stopped short of blaming the . regime for the blasts. David Hartwell, Middle East analyst at . IHS Jane’s in London, said the timing of the bombs ‘is certain to be . viewed with suspicion by the opposition’. The Syrian government escalated its . crackdown on protesters ahead of the Arab League observers’ arrival on . Thursday. More than 200 were killed in two days this week.
Blasts are first in capital since start of uprising against Assad in March .
By . Lee Moran . UPDATED: . 19:36 EST, 23 December 2011 . Suicide bombers killed 40 people and wounded more than 100 yesterday in twin blasts that ripped through an upmarket and heavily guarded district of the Syrian capital Damascus. One explosion gouged a 6ft deep crater into the ground. The blasts came a day after an advance team of Arab League observers arrived in the country to monitor Syria’s promise to end its crackdown on protesters demanding the overthrow of President Bashar Assad. Scroll down for video... Carnage: Footage from Syrian state shows a dead body being carried away from the site of a suicide attack outside a security service base in Damascus . Rocked: Syrian security services inspect the entrance of an intelligence agency building targeted by a suicide attack in Damascus . The United Nations said the uprising had left 5,000 dead and thousands more detained. The Syrian authorities immediately pointed the finger at possible Al Qaeda involvement. Within hours, government officials . took the observers to the scene of the explosions outside intelligence . service buildings in the upscale Kfar Sousa district. Mutilated and torn . bodies still lay amid rubble, twisted debris and burned cars. Shell: The wreckage of a car believed to have been used in a suicide attack in Damascus . Blown apart: Syrian state TV shows citizens searching through the rubble at the site of a suicide attack in Damascus . The officials said the outrage backed . their long-time claims that the turmoil is not a popular uprising but . the work of terrorists. A Syrian foreign ministry spokesman said Lebanon . had warned it two days ago that an Al Qaeda cell had entered Syria from . its territory. But an opposition leader raised doubts . over the authorities’ version of the events, suggesting the regime was . pitching its case to the observers. Omar Idilbi of the Syrian National . Council, an umbrella group of regime opponents, called the explosions . ‘very mysterious because they happened in heavily guarded areas that are . difficult to be penetrated by a car’. Bloody: A dead body is carried away from the site of a suicide attack in Damascus . He said: ‘The presence of the . observers pushed the regime to give this story in order to scare the . committee from moving around Syria.’ He stopped short of blaming the . regime for the blasts. David Hartwell, Middle East analyst at . IHS Jane’s in London, said the timing of the bombs ‘is certain to be . viewed with suspicion by the opposition’. The Syrian government escalated its . crackdown on protesters ahead of the Arab League observers’ arrival on . Thursday. More than 200 were killed in two days this week.
guarded district of the Syrian capital Damascus. attack in Damascus . The officials said the