3 blasts reported in Idlib as Syrian offensive continues

Syrian towns faced renewed attacks by troops as a top UN truce monitor arrived in the country A third blast rocked the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib on Monday in front of an army office, hours after twin explosions targeting security buildings left more than 20 people dead, a monitoring group said. "An explosion shook the university neighbourhood in Idlib about an hour ago and there are reports of wounded," the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Right said.
The blasts targeted security buildings with majority of the dead members of the security forces, the Observatory said.
An activist told the Associated Press one of the blasts was about 200 metres from a hotel where two United Nations truce monitors have been staying.
The attacks in the city, located near the Turkish border, took place in spite of a UN-backed ceasefire that came into effect April 12 but has failed to stop the violence.
Syria's state TV showed footage of shattered apartment blocks, cars destroyed and blood on the street in Idlib.
State media blamed the attack on "armed terrorists," a term oft-used by the government to describe those trying to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad.
“Terrorist bombings in Hanano Square and Carlton Street in Idlib and news of casualties,” a SANA newsflash said.
A largely peaceful uprising in Syria began more than 13 months ago but turned into an insurgency after a crackdown by the regime.
On Sunday, militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Central Bank building in Damascus, causing slight damage, and wounded four police when they attacked their patrol, state television reported. Activists in Damascus reported explosions and gunfire.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC) activist network said nine people have been killed by the security forces in Syria on Monday, excluding the Idlib blasts death count.
The LCC said three people have been killed in each of Homs and Deir Ezzor, two in Idlib, and one in Daraya, in Damascus Suburbs. It also reorted dozens injured by government shelling in al-Rastan, Homs.
The Syrian military was also reportedly conducting raids and increasing its presence in a number of suburbs of the capital, activists said. The LCC said troops were carrying out random arrests and looting and burning shops.
Meanwhile, a veteran peacekeeper urged all sides to "stop the violence" as he flew in to Syria on Sunday to lead a UN observer force for a more than two-week-old ceasefire that has failed to stop bloodshed.
"To achieve the success of the Kofi Annan plan, I call on all sides to stop violence and help us continue the cessation of armed violence," Major General Robert Mood said, referring to the international envoy on the crisis.
"We will work for the full implementation of the six-point Annan plan which the Syrian government agreed to," he told reporters in Damascus.
"To achieve this, we now have 30 monitors on the ground, and in the coming days we will double this figure," he said, adding that the number would "rapidly" increase to 300.
Annan's plan calls for a commitment to stop all armed violence, a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire, media access to all areas affected by the fighting, an inclusive Syrian-led political process, a right to demonstrate, and release of arbitrarily detained people.
Mood, a 54-year-old Norwegian who negotiated the conditions for the deployment of the advance team, was head of the UN Truce Supervision Organisation, which monitors Middle East truces, from 2009 until 2011.
A spokesman for the observer mission said the advance party had set up base in the major troublespots at the centre of the bloodshed that the United Nations estimates has cost more than 9000 lives since March 2011.
A putative truce, which technically came into effect on April 12, has taken a daily battering.
And in what was believed to be the first case of Westerners going missing in the violence-swept country, Budapest said that two Hungarians had been kidnapped.
Peter Szijjarto, a spokesman for Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, told the country's state news agency MTI on Sunday that the two were alive.
"The foreign ministry, the Hungarian consulate in Damascus and the TEK (Hungary's anti-terrorism centre) are working together day and night to ensure that the kidnapping will be resolved peacefully as soon as possible," he said.
The Hungarians were snatched on Saturday from a company's offices in southeast Syria, the spokesperson said.
With the bloodshed adding to the death toll each day since the ceasefire, Red Cross chief Jakob Kellenberger said Annan's peace plan was "in danger," in an interview with Swiss weekly Der Sonntag.
 Across the border in Lebanon, intelligence officers on Sunday were questioning the crew of a Sierra Leone-flagged vessel originating in Libya over allegations it was carrying arms to Syrian rebels.
The interception of the ship by Lebanon -- currently governed by a largely pro-Syrian coalition -- gave grist to Russian opposition to the tough Western and Arab line taken against its long-time Middle East ally.
Lebanon said it had intercepted three containers of heavy machineguns, artillery shells, rockets, rocket launchers and other explosives destined for rebel forces.
State newspapers Tishrin and Ath-Thawra, meanwhile, charged that al-Qaeda was operating in Syria and carrying out its trademark suicide car bombings with the support of Washington and some Arab countries.
In the latest bomb attack in Damascus, at least 11 people were killed and 28 wounded on Friday, official media said.
An Islamist group calling itself al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the attack, the SITE Monitoring Service said on Sunday. The group said the bomber, whom it named as Abu Omar al-Shami, had targeted the security forces.
The US-based SITE, which tracks jihadi websites, said the group posted its claim on the Shumukh al-Islam site which is generally used by al-Qaeda.