Forty killed in Damascus blasts

Forty people have been confirmed killed and around 100 wounded in twin suicide car bombings in Damascus, the Syrian government said today.

State TV blamed al-Qaida for the attacks.

The blasts are the first such attack in the Syrian capital since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad in March and came a day after an advance team of Arab League observers arrived in the country on a mission to try to resolve the turmoil.

The government has long depicted the uprising as the work of terrorists and armed gangs.

Syria's deputy foreign minister Faysal Mekdad gave the death toll while accompanying an advance team of Arab League observers to the scene of the blasts.

Mekdad says the blasts bolster the government's claims that the turmoil was the work of terrorists, telling reporters: "We said it from the beginning."

State TV says the blasts targeted security and intelligence headquarters.

"We said it from the beginning, this is terrorism. They are killing the army and civilians," Mekdad told reporters outside the intelligence building, where bodies still littered the ground.

Alongside him, the head of the observer advance team Sameer Seif el-Yazal said, "We are here to see the facts on the ground... What we are seeing today is regretful, the important thing is for things to calm down."

Outside the intelligence building, mutilated and torn bodies lay amid rubble, twisted debris and burned cars on the main avenue in Damascus' upscale Kfar Sousa district.