Suicide car bombers struck Damascus on Friday

An interior ministryspokesman raised the death toll to 44 people in an evening address on statetelevision. He blamed al Qaedafor the blasts, which hit two security compounds and came a day after thearrival of Arab Leagueofficials to prepare for a monitoring team that will check whether President Bashar al-Assadis implementing a plan to end the bloodshed.
Assad has unleashed tanks and troops to try to crush nine months of streetprotests inspired by other Arab uprisings this year. Mainly peaceful ralliesare now increasingly eclipsed by an armed insurgency against his military andsecurity apparatus.
But Friday's blasts in central Damascus signaled a dramatic
escalation inviolence, which Syrianauthorities blame on armed groups they say have killed 2,000soldiers and security force members this year. The United Nations says Assad's crackdown has killed5,000 people.
"It's a new phase. We're getting militarized here," said JoshuaLandis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma who felt Friday's bombswere a "small premonition" of what may come in a country that someanalysts see slipping towards civil war.
"This is when the Syrian opposition is beginning to realize they are ontheir own," he added, referring to Western reluctance to intervenemilitarily in Syria.
The interior ministry spokesman said 166 people were wounded by theexplosions. It broadcast footage of mangled bodies being carried in blanketsand stretchers into ambulances.
Bloodied streets were littered with human remains, blackened hulks of carsand a row of corpses wrapped in sheets.
"This is a qualitative escalation of the terrorist operations thatSyria has been exposed to for the last nine months," the interior ministryspokesman said.
"These two suicide terrorist operations show, once again, the real faceof the plot seeking to shake Syria's stability."
He said the first car bomb struck the main entrance of Damascus securitybranch at 10:18. The second bomb, one minute later, hit a central intelligencebuilding.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdesi said the attacks were carried outby "terrorists (trying) to sabotage the will for change" in Syria,and followed warnings from Lebanon that al Qaeda fighters had infiltrated Syriafrom Lebanese territory.
The United States condemned the attacks, saying there was "nojustification for terrorism of any kind" and that the work of the Arab League shouldnot be hindered.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Al Qaeda are Sunni Muslimmilitants. Assad and Syria's power elite belong to the Alawite branch ofShi'ite Islam while the majority of Syrians, including protesters andinsurgents, are Sunnis.
Assad's opponents said the attack could have been staged to drive home thegovernment's argument. "We have all sorts of suspicions that this could beorganized by the regime itself," said Basma Qadmani, spokeswoman for theSyrian National Council.
Activists said they were surprised at the speed with which authoritiesleveled accusations at al Qaeda, barely an hour after the explosions shook acentral district which residents said is well-policed and has restrictions ontraffic movement.
"I believe the blast was engineered by the Syrian regime,"Lebanon's anti-Syrian former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said.
Syria has generally barred foreign media from the country, making it hard toverify accounts of events from either side.
"WAR IN SYRIA"
Analysts said authorities were unlikely to have staged an attack that onlyserves to highlight their vulnerability.
"There is a war going on in Syria now," said Rami Khouri, directorof the Issam Fares Institute in Beirut, saying various armed rebel or Islamistgroups could have staged the bombings.
The last serious attack of its kind in the tightly-controlled Syrian capitalwas three years ago, when a car bomb went off near a security complex, killing17 civilians.
That attack, for which Syrian authorities blamed an Islamist suicide bomberusing a car brought in from a unnamed neighboring Arab country the day before,was one of the biggest in Damascus since an Islamist militant campaign in the1980s against Hafez al-Assad, late father of the current president.
Hilal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University in Beirut,said neither the government nor al Qaeda were likely to have been responsiblefor Friday's attack.
"When it comes to security in Damascus ... the government does not playgames," he said.
"I think this is the symptom of desperation after so many Syrians haveseen blood and death in the crushing of protests."
The United Nations says Assad's forces have killed more than 5,000 people intheir crackdown on the protests, which erupted in March instigated by uprisingsthat toppled autocratic leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya over the course ofthe year.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 15 civilians werekilled outside the capital on Friday, eight of them in the city of Homs whichhas been a centre of protest.
The intensifying violence on both sides in Syria has raised fears that thecountry is drifting towards civil war. Downtown Damascus and Syria's secondcity Aleppo hitherto had largely escaped the turmoil now common in many othercities and towns.
"First I heard an explosion and then, all of a sudden, I saw humanlimbs flying everywhere," said a man interviewed by Syrian television nearthe site of the attack in Kafr Sousa.
His head and face were covered in bandages.
State media said the Arab League delegation, which will be seekingassurances of free movement for 150 monitors due to arrive in Syria by the endof the month, had visited the sites of the explosions to inspect the damage.
The monitors are supposed to verify Syria's implementation of an Arab Leaguepeace plan it agreed six weeks ago, which stipulates a withdrawal of troopsfrom protest-hit cities and towns, release of prisoners and dialogue with theopposition.
Arab League sources have said the advance team, led by top League officialSamir Seif al-Yazal, comprises a dozen people, including financial,administrative and legal experts.
Activists say Assad, 46, is still trying to suppress public dissent withmilitary force despite European Union and Arab League sanctions, and his avowedcommitment to the peace plan.
Damascus says more than 1,000 prisoners have been freed since the Arab planwas agreed and the army has pulled out of cities. Anti-Assad activists deny anysuch pullout has occurred.
The government has promised a parliamentary election early next year as wellas constitutional reform that might loosen the Baath Party's 48-year grip onpower.
Syrian pro-democracy activists are deeply skeptical about Assad's commitmentto the plan. If implemented, it could embolden demonstrators demanding an endto his 11-year rule, which followed three decades of domination by his father.
The British-based Avaaz rights group said on Thursday it had evidence ofmore than 6,237 deaths of civilians and security forces in the conflict, 617 ofthem under torture. At least 400 of the dead were children, it said.