DAMASCUS, Syria -- Twin bombings near an elementary school in Syria killed at least 32 people Wednesday, including at least 10 children, with the second blast going off as screaming parents frantically searched for their sons and daughters.
The attack occurred outside the Ekremah al-Makhzoumi elementary school in a government-controlled area of the central city of Homs dominated by minority Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect to which President Bashar Assad's family belongs. It was one of the deadliest episodes in the area in months.
A vehicle exploded as children were leaving school, and the second blast happened as adults carried away bodies, sending a new wave of panic through the crowd.
The SANA state news agency said at least 32 people were killed and 115 wounded in the attacks. A local official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said immediately after the bombings that at least 10 of the dead were children.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 39, including 30 children under the age of 12. It said the second blast was caused by a suicide bomber. The discrepancy in the casualty figures could not be immediately reconciled.
Homs Gov. Talal Barazi described the blasts as a "terrorist act and a desperate attempt that targeted schoolchildren."
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday's attack, but Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad have carried out numerous bombings in government-held areas of Homs.
All sides have carried out attacks on civilians during the conflict -- now in its fourth year -- but rarely have children appeared to be the direct target.
In May, Syrian government forces bombed a complex in the northern city of Aleppo that housed a school alongside a rebel compound. At least 19 people, including 10 children, were killed in that bombing.
Meanwhile, the Observatory reported Wednesday that militants of the Islamic State extremist group beheaded nine Kurdish fighters, including three women, captured in fighting near the Syria-Turkey border. Dozens of militants and Kurdish fighters were killed in the fighting, it said.
The Kurdish fighters were taken prisoner during the battle over the northern Syrian town of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, according to the Observatory, which gathers its information from activists inside Syria.
The chief Kurdish group fighting in Syria, known as the YPG, advocates gender equality, and women fight alongside men.
Kurdish forces have been locked in fierce clashes with Islamic State militants in and around Kobani since the extremist group launched an assault in mid-September. The fighting has created one of the single largest exoduses in Syria's civil war, with more than 160,000 people fleeing into Turkey, U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said Tuesday.
The Islamic State group has pressed its assault on Kobani despite airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition on its positions. The U.S. has been bombing the Islamic State group across Syria since last week and in neighboring Iraq since early August.
The U.S. military said American warplanes conducted three airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria near Kobani overnight Tuesday and on Wednesday, destroying a militant vehicle, an artillery piece and a tank.
U.S. and British warplanes also carried out five airstrikes in neighboring Iraq, knocking out two militant vehicles, a militant-occupied building and two fighting positions northwest of Mosul, the country's second-largest city, which fell to the Islamic State group in June.
British Royal Air Force warplanes flying out of a U.K. air base on Cyprus have destroyed four Islamic State targets in Iraq over the past two days, the base commander, Group Capt. Chaz Kennett, said Wednesday.
Elsewhere in Iraq, a car bomb near markets in Baghdad killed 15 people and wounded another 40 Wednesday, security and medical officials said.
Hours earlier, a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint on a highway just south of Baghdad, killing four civilians and three policemen, a police officer and a medical official said. They said 24 people were wounded in the explosion.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with reporters.
The United Nations said Wednesday that at least 1,119 Iraqis died in violence in September. The real number is likely much higher, because the U.N. figure did not include killings in areas controlled by the Islamic State.
Information for this article was contributed by Burhan Ozbilici, Menelaos Hadjcostis, Sinan Salaheddin, Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Murtada Faraj of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/02/2014