Syrian rebels blast hotel from tunnels

Syrian government officials walk on a road, back dropped, by damaged buildings from fighting with Free Syrian Army fighters in the old city of Homs, Syria, Thursday, May 8, 2014. Syrian President Bashar Assad's government in the north prepared to regain control of the central city of Homs following last week's cease-fire agreement after a fierce, two-year battle with the rebels trying to oust him. (AP Photo)

Syrian government officials walk on a road, back dropped, by damaged buildings from fighting with Free Syrian Army fighters in the old city of Homs, Syria, Thursday, May 8, 2014. Syrian President Bashar Assad's government in the north prepared to regain control of the central city of Homs following last week's cease-fire agreement after a fierce, two-year battle with the rebels trying to oust him. (AP Photo)

Friday, May 9, 2014

BEIRUT -- Syrian rebels bombed a once-luxurious, historic hotel building used as a government army base in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday, leveling it and causing multiple casualties in an explosion carried out by digging tunnels under the complex, activists and militants said.

The blast set off a mushroom cloud next to the historic citadel of Aleppo, collapsing the Carlton Hotel in a government-held area near the front lines in the city, which has been one of the bloodiest and destructive battlegrounds of Syria's civil war.

Rebels on Thursday completed their withdrawal from Homs in a negotiated evacuation that surrenders Syria's third-largest city to full government control for the first time in more than two years. Syrian state TV announced that the last of the rebels left Homs by the afternoon.

The death toll from the Aleppo bombing was not immediately known.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains a network of activists on the ground, said at least 14 soldiers were killed in the blast. The Islamic Front, Syria's biggest rebel alliance, claimed responsibility for the attack that it said killed 50 soldiers. The claims could not be independently verified.

The attack was the second carried out by the Islamic Front against the Carlton. The first, purportedly carried out also through explosives-packed tunnels, caused a partial collapse of the building in February. The Front, an alliance of several Islamic groups fighting to topple Assad, has used this technique to carry out deadly attacks against government forces in Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

The explosion was a blow to President Bashar Assad's government in the north as his troops regained control of Homs under a cease-fire reached with rebels last week after a fierce, two-year battle with the rebels trying to oust him.

In the afternoon, a banner on Syrian TV said the last of the rebels left the city, proclaiming, "Old Homs is totally clean of armed terrorist groups" -- the term used by the government for the rebels. Homs Gov. Talal Barazi said earlier in the day that more than 1,500 fighters left the city since Wednesday.

No such agreement appears to be in sight in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial hub. The city has been carved up into opposition- and government-held areas since the rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012, capturing territory along Syria's northern border with Turkey.

In recent months, government aircraft relentlessly has bombed rebel-held areas of the city and the opposition fighters have hit back, firing mortars into government-held areas. The rebels also have detonated car bombs in residential areas, killing dozens of people.

The Islamic Front posted a statement on its official Twitter account Thursday saying that its "fighters this morning leveled the Carlton Hotel barracks in Old Aleppo and a number of buildings near it, killing 50 soldiers."

The Observatory said Islamic Front fighters planted a huge amount of explosives in a tunnel they dug below the hotel and detonated it remotely. It said the hotel was completely destroyed in the blast and at least 14 government soldiers were killed in the blast.

Syria's uprising began with largely peaceful protests and has evolved into a civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting largely Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's government, which is dominated by Alawites, a sect of Shiite Islam.

Islamic extremists, including foreign fighters and Syrian rebels who have taken up hard-line al-Qaida-style ideologies, have played an increasingly prominent role among fighters, dampening the West's support for the rebellion to overthrow Assad.

In Washington on Thursday, the Treasury Department sanctioned six Syrian officials and a Russian bank for their purported support of Assad's government.

The Treasury said Tempbank, based in Moscow, has provided millions of dollars in cash and has helped facilitate financial services to the Syrian government.

Throughout the crisis in Syria, Russia has been in Assad's corner while the U.S. has supported the opposition.

Sanctions also were slapped on the bank's senior executive, Mikhail Gagloev, who the U.S. claims has personally traveled to the Syrian capital of Damascus to make deals with Assad's government.

"In one instance, Tempbank arranged to deliver millions of dollars in cash to Vnukovo Airport in Moscow for pick-up by cash couriers working for the Central Bank of Syria," the department said in a statement.

David Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the action builds on the Treasury Department's ongoing effort to apply economic pressure on the Syrian government by "choking off access to the international financial system."

Information for this article was contributed by Albert Aji, Yasmin Saker and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.

A Section on 05/09/2014