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Beirut/ AFP
A double bombing killed at least 57 people in Syria’s Homs on Sunday, as US Secretary of State John Kerry said a provisional deal had been reached on the terms of a ceasefire.
World powers have been pushing for a break in fighting that was meant to go into effect by Friday, but have struggled to agree how to implement it.
Violence has intensified on the ground, with double car bomb blasts hitting the Al Zahraa neighbourhood of the central city of Homs on Sunday morning.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 57 people had been killed and dozens wounded in the explosions.
State television broadcast footage from the scene, showing emergency workers carrying a charred body on a stretcher past shops shorn of their fronts and mangled cars and minibuses.
Homs city has regularly been targeted in bomb attacks, including last month when a double bombing claimed by the IS group killed 22 people in Al Zahraa neighbourhood.
The district’s residents are mostly Alawites, the minority sect of Syria’s ruling clan, including President Bashar Al Assad. Most of those killed have been civilians. Among the deadliest attacks to hit Homs was in October 2014, when blasts at a school in the Akrameh district killed 48 children and four adults.