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Damascus, Syria • A powerful bomb ripped through a bustling commercial district of Damascus on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, shattering store fronts and bringing Syria's civil war to the heart of the capital for the second consecutive day.
A day earlier, the Syrian prime minister narrowly escaped an assassination attempt after a car bomb struck near his convoy, a few kilometers (miles) from Tuesday's blast. The bombings appear to be part of an accelerated campaign by opposition forces to hit President Bashar Assad's regime in the heavily defended capital.
In Washington, President Barack Obama, who has said the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would mark an unacceptable escalation of the country's civil war, said the United States must be more certain of all the facts before he decides on how the country will intervene in the conflict.
The White House said last week intelligence indicates the Syrian military has likely used a deadly nerve agent on at least two occasions in the civil war. Damascus denies the allegations, and says Syrian rebels are trying to frame it.
Tuesday's bombing struck the Marjeh neighborhood, a bustling commercial area near the Old City of Damascus, Syrian TV said. It described the explosion as a "terrorist bombing," using the term Assad's regime uses to refer to opposition fighters.
The state news agency said 14 people were killed and 103 wounded in the attack.
"I heard a very loud bang and then the ceiling collapsed on top of me," said Zaher Nafeq, who owns a mobile phone shop in the Damascus Towers, a 23-floor office building. He was wounded in his hand and his mobile phone shop was badly damaged in the blast.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Damascus and other cities that remain under government control in the third year of the conflict have been claimed in the past by the al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra group — one of scores of rebel factions fighting to oust Assad.
The target of Tuesday's attack was not immediately clear, although the explosion took place outside the former Interior Ministry building that was also damaged in the blast.
Ambulances rushed to the scene and Syrian state TV aired footage firefighters trying to extinguish a blaze that engulfed several cars and buildings. A man was seen lying on the ground in a pool of blood while another, apparently wounded, was seen being carried by civilians into a bus.
Inspecting the site of the blast, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar, who himself escaped a car bomb that targeted his convoy in December, told reporters the back-to-back attacks in the capital were in response to the "victories and achievements scored by the Syrian Arab Army on the ground against terrorism."
In recent weeks, government troops have overrun two rebel-held Damascus suburbs and a town outside the capital. They also have captured several villages near the border with Lebanon as part of their efforts to secure the strategic corridor running from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, which is the heartland of the president's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Tuesday's explosion underlined the tenuous security in the Syrian capital, just a day after a remotely detonated roadside bomb struck Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi's convoy. The premier escaped the assassination attempt unharmed, according to state TV.
Also Tuesday, Syrian troops battled opposition fighters near a military helicopter base in the northern province of Aleppo, killing 15 rebels in a single airstrike against their positions, according to Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman.
The rebels tried to storm the Mannagh base late Monday but the regime deployed fighter jets to the area, pounding rebel positions around the base, which is near Syria's border with Turkey, Abdul-Rahman said.
In the northwestern province of Idlib, a government airstrike near the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey killed one child and wounded several more people, the Observatory said.
An Associated Press journalist near Reyhanli on the Turkish side of the frontier described a huge plume of black smoke and reported seeing wounded people being rushed by ambulance from the Syrian side to the Turkish control point.
Thousands of Syrian refugees live in a makeshift camp known as the Bab al-Hawa refugee camp near the border with Turkey.
The state news agency said 14 people were killed and 103 wounded in the attack.
Syria's conflict began with largely peaceful anti-government protests in March 2011, but has since morphed into a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people, according to the United Nations. Air power has proven to be Assad's greatest advantage in the civil war, and he has exploited it to check rebel advances and prevent the opposition from setting up a rival government in the territory it has seized in the north.
As the regime has pushed back against opposition fighters, it has come under allegations of using chemical weapons on at least two occasions dating back to December.
Obama, who has said that use of chemical weapons or the transfer of those stockpiles to terrorists would cross a "red line" and have "enormous consequences," has sought to temper expectations of quick American action since the White House announced the intelligence assessment last week.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, he reiterated that he needed more certainty before acting, but added that if it is determined that the Assad regime used chemical weapons "we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us."
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that use of chemical weapons in Syria would also be a "red line" for Iran, but suggested rebel forces should be investigated rather than the Islamic Republic's allies in Damascus.
In the latest alleged attack, activists in the town of Saraqeb in northern Idlib province claimed the government bombed the town late Monday with chemical agents. It said the attack caused respiratory problems and other symptoms among a few residents which they claimed were consistent with a chemical attack.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was unable to confirm the purported use of chemical agents.
The Syrian state news agency offered a different narrative, saying "terrorists" brought bags of an unknown white power to Saraqeb and opened them, causing respiratory problems among those exposed to the powder. It said the terrorists then transported the injured to Turkish hospitals to "accuse the Syrian armed troops of using chemical weapons."
Border authorities in Turkey decontaminated a group of Syrians wounded in the Saraqeb attack as they entered the country and hospital staff treating them wore protective equipment, according to an aide to the governor of Turkey's Hatay province, which borders Syria.
The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing government rules that bar civil servants from speaking to journalists, told AP on Tuesday there was no indication that chemical weapons were used in Saraqeb attack.