Car bomb (illustration)
Car bomb (illustration)Thinkstock

In what is very similar to a Gaza style “work accident”, at least 29 rebels died in a blast on Sunday in the central Syrian city of Homs as they primed a car bomb for an attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group told AFP that at least 29 people were killed, most or all of them believed to be rebels, when a car bomb exploded in the city.

"The death toll is likely to rise because there are dozens of people missing and body parts in the area of the blast," the Britain-based group said.

State news agency SANA also reported the blast, saying a car had exploded while being loaded with explosives.

One activist network, the Syrian Revolution General Commission, said the blast was the result of a rocket landing on an ammunition depot in the area. The claim could not be independently confirmed, noted AFP.

The blast took place on the outskirts of the Old City of Homs, which is under rebel control.

Some 1,400 civilians were able to leave the area this year under UN supervision, but an estimated 1,500 people remain until the army siege.

In a similar recent incident,  at least 22 Iraqi terrorists were killed during a training exercise, after a commander instructing would-be suicide bombers accidentally detonated himself.

The terrorists had been filming a propaganda video before a planned suicide bombing when the vehicle exploded. Instead, the terrorists filmed their own deaths.

Several weeks ago, a leader of the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis terrorist group died in a car crash, which detonated the explosives he was transporting.

Last week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the death toll in the three-year-old Syrian civil war had topped 150,000.

The group said it had documented the deaths of 150,344 people, 51,212 of them civilians, including nearly 7,985 children.

The group said 37,781 members of the armed opposition had been killed in the fighting, including members of jihadist groups the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

A total of 58,480 regime forces, including more than 35,000 soldiers had also been killed, according to the group.