BEIRUT: Rebels seized control of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Syria’s second city of Aleppo yesterday after several days of fierce clashes that damaged the building, a watchdog reported.

State news agency SANA, meanwhile, said a car bomb exploded in a regime-held suburb of the central city of Homs, killing a number of people and 

wounding others.

In Aleppo, regime troops were forced to withdraw from the mosque at dawn, taking up positions in buildings around the landmark structure, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The mosque’s museum caught fire during the battle, causing its ceiling to collapse, adding to damage done in October when one of its intricately sculpted colonnades was charred in clashes.

Aleppo’s director of Islamic endowments said the mosque’s library, which contains “valuable Islamic relics and Quranic manuscripts dating back to pre-Mamluk times”, had been ransacked and destroyed.

“Armed terrorist groups have looted and completely destroyed the Islamic library, which is one of the most valuable in the region with an estimated value of hundreds of thousands of Syrian pounds,” Abdel Qader Al Shihabi told AFP.

The site has been a place of worship since the 8th century, but the original building was razed by the Mongols in the 13th century, from when the current structure dates. Elsewhere in Aleppo’s Unesco-listed Old City, fighting raged around the Justice Palace.

Warplanes also carried out several raids in the northern province of Raqa.AFP