BEIRUT — Suicide bombers targeted Syrian troops and a hospital on Wednesday in the rugged Qalamoun hills north of Damascus, where rebels are struggling to reverse government gains that threaten to cut one of their chief supply lines, activists and officials said.
Fighting in the region has driven thousands of refugees into neighboring Lebanon, prompting authorities there to allow aid groups to build a camp for Syrians for the first time since the uprising began three years ago, a UN official said. It is a transit camp, not meant to be permanent.
In Damascus meanwhile, government forces arrested a leading opposition figure known for his criticism of the government of Bashar Assad but also for his condemnation of violence, activists said.
There was no precise figure for casualties from the car bomb attacks in Nabak and Deir Attiyeh. The towns belong to a string of communities along a route used by rebels to bring supplies from nearby Lebanon to opposition-held enclaves outside the capital and to the central city of Homs.
A suicide car bomber targeted a checkpoint manned by Syrian soldiers while another blew up near a security headquarters. Both were on the outskirts of Nabak, said Rami Abdurrahman from the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and another activist based near the town.
He said about two dozen soldiers were either killed or wounded.
In Deir Attiyeh, two suicide car bombers detonated their explosives outside a hospital, killing the guards, Syrian state television said. It said the attackers were Saudi citizens.
Abdurrahman said the rebels belonged to the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. He obtains his information from a network of activists on the ground.
Fighting began in the Qalamoun hills last week, when forces loyal to Assad started an offensive against rebel-held towns there.
A government victory would tighten the siege of rebel-held enclaves near Damascus, where fighters are losing ground to the army and residents suffer from chronic food shortages.
Assad’s forces have scored key battlefield wins in recent weeks. They are backed up by fighters of the Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah, activists said.