2 bombings target Syria's Homs city

Two bombings rocked pro-government districts of Syria's central city of Homs Tuesday, leaving wounded people and property losses, a monitor group reported.

The bombings are believed to have been caused by two explosive devices affixed under two cars that tore through the pro-government districts of Ekrima and Nuzha, both inhabited by people of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, to whom the ruling elite in Syria belong.

At least two people were injured in the double bombings, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based watchdog group that tracks the Syrian war.

Rebels in the countryside of Homs have carried out similar bombings in government-loyal districts of Homs and elsewhere in Syria, currently in its fifth year of civil conflict.

Separately on Tuesday, the Observatory said at least 18 people were killed, including women from the same family, and many others wounded by Syrian airstrikes against the rebel-held Jabal Al-Zawyieh region in the northern province of Idlib, large swathes of which fell recently to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

The death toll is likely to rise due to the high number of critically wounded people, the Observatory added.