DAMASCUS (AFP):  Twin suicide car bomb blasts ripped through an upscale Damascus district Friday, targeting heavily guarded intelligence buildings and killing at least 40 people, Syrian authorities said.

The blasts came a day after an advance team of Arab League observers arrived in the country to monitor Syria's promise to end its crackdown on protesters demanding the ouster of President Bashar Assad. Government officials took the observers to the scene of the explosions and said it backed their long-time claims that the turmoil is not a popular uprising but the work of terrorists.

“We said it from the beginning, this is terrorism. They are killing the army and civilians,” Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad told reporters outside the headquarters of the General Intelligence Agency, where bodies still littered the ground. State TV said initial investigations indicated possible involvement by the Al-Qaeda terror network.

Alongside him, the head of the observer advance team Sameer Seif el-Yazal said, “We are here to see the facts on the ground... What we are seeing today is regretful; the important thing is for things to calm down.”

The blasts went off outside the main headquarters of the General Intelligence Agency and a branch of the military intelligence, two of the most powerful of Syria's multiple intelligence bodies. Outside the two buildings, mutilated and torn bodies lay amid rubble, twisted debris and burned cars in Damascus' upscale Kfar Sousa district. Bystanders and ambulance workers used blankets and stretchers to carry blood-stained bodies into vehicles. All the windows were shattered in the nearby state security building, which was targeted by the other bomb.

The two blasts went off within moments of each other in the morning Friday, a weekend day, echoing across the city.

“The explosions shook the house, it was frightful,” said Nidal Hamidi, 34, a Syrian journalist who lives in Kfar Sousa. He said gunfire was heard immediately following the explosion and said apartment windows in a 200-yard (meter) radius from the explosions were shattered.

A military official told reporters that more than 40 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. He spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity in accordance with military rules. Earlier, state TV said the dead were mostly civilians but included military and security personnel.