At least 131 people were killed as bombings, clashes and air strikes shook Syria on Tuesday, a rights watchdog said.
In the capital Damascus, gunmen shot and killed the brother of Syria's parliament speaker as he drove to work, the state-run news agency reported.
It was the latest in a wave of assassinations targeting Syrian officials, army officers and other prominent supporters of President Bashar Assad's regime.
Four of the president's top security aides were killed in a rebel bombing of state security headquarters in Damascus on July 18, including the defense minister and Assad's brother-in-law.
The SANA news agency said Mohammed Osama Laham, brother of Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham, was killed in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan.
In the latest in a wave of bomb attacks, at least 10 civilians were killed and 40 wounded as three blasts hit the west Damascus suburb of Qudsaya on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"At least 10 civilians were killed and more than 40 wounded, some in critical condition, when three improvised explosive devices detonated in the working-class district of Waroud in the suburb of Qudsaya," the Britain-based watchdog said.
State news agency SANA also reported casualties from a bombing in the area, without giving an exact toll.
Meanwhile, rebels ambushed a military convoy in Idlib province, their stronghold in the northwest, killing at least 12 troops and wounding 20, the Observatory said.
"At least 12 regime troops were killed and at least 20 wounded by improvised explosive devices, gunfire and mortar rounds that targeted their trucks, bus and armored personnel carriers near the town of Mohambal," the watchdog said...