DAMASCUS, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- Hopes for a Syrian ceasefire during Edi al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, shattered as government troops and the opposition armed forces pointed fingers at each other for unabated violence that rocked the crisis-hit state.
The four-day Muslim holiday was supposed to be calm after both the Syrian army and the armed rebels had agreed on the holiday cease-fire truce put forward by UN-Arab League special representative Lakhdar Brahimi.
However, on Friday, the first day of the holiday, two car bombs rocked the capital Damascus and the southern province of Daraa, leaving more than 20 people killed and many others injured.
State-media SANA reported that another booby-trapped car went off before a church in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour on Saturday, damaging its facade and causing other material damages.
The Syrian army's general command stressed its determination to decisively repulse all "criminal acts" committed by "terrorists," saying the "terrorists" had violated the cease-fire for a second consecutive day.
In a statement aired on the state TV, the general command recounted a number of violations committed by the armed rebels on Saturday, including the church bombing and an attack on five water pumps in the northern city of Aleppo that resulted in a water outage in the western part of the city.
Meanwhile, the Sham FM radio said armed men stopped a passenger bus in Andan area in Aleppo and set it on fire, killing 14 civilian passengers.
As the army accused "armed terrorist groups" of violating the truce, the opposition activists also reported airstrikes by Syrian war jets on some restive suburbs in east Damascus, adding that many people were killed.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC), an activists' network, said 12 people were killed during the airstrikes on the battered city of Douma, about 10 km northeast of downtown Damascus.
The LCC said 39 people had so far been killed nationwide on Saturday. Yet, its account could not be checked independently.
During the day, a group of Syrian rebels said on their Facebook page that they captured a Lebanese journalist in Aleppo, Lebanon's LBCI TV reported.
"A coordination committee of the Syrian revolution in Aleppo's Aazaz announced the detention of the journalist, Fidaa Itani, who works for LBCI and other media outlets, accusing his affairs of being inharmonious with the trajectory of the Syrian revolution and rebels," they said.
A rebel leader based in Aleppo reportedly said that the cease-fire was born dead and blamed the Syrian government for being behind the faltering truce.
In response to the continued violence, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov blamed the Syrian opposition for breaking the cease-fire announced by the government during the Muslim holiday.
"Westerners again block the condemnation of terror attack in Damascus at the UN Security Council (UNSC), and the opposition breaks the truce. Its course toward continuing violence is obvious," Gatilov said on his Twitter account.
Russia initiated a statement at the UNSC on Friday, condemning the "terrorist acts" in Syria, but the drafted document was blocked by the UNSC due to its "insufficiency of information," Russian media reported.
With the unabated violence and fighting, Syrians chose to stay indoors during the holiday and their hopes for a holiday ceasefire had shattered.
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