UNITED NATIONS/BEIRUT: The United Nations said Saturday it aims to bring together Syria’s warring parties on Jan. 25 in Geneva to begin talks to try to end the civil war, as violence raged in several areas of the country over the weekend.

U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura plans to convene representatives of the Syrian government and “the broadest possible spectrum of the Syrian opposition and others,” his spokesman said in a statement.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution on Dec. 18 endorsing a road map for a Syria peace process, in a rare show of unity among major powers.

Opposition activists Sunday said Syrian government forces booby trapped a cluster of farm buildings in the southern Deraa province and detonated the explosives as several Islamist rebel factions gathered at the venue, killing 17 militants.

The explosion, which took place late Saturday, was the latest blow to the rebels shortly after the assassination the previous day of a powerful rebel leader on the outskirts of Damascus. The developments could boost the position of the Damascus government ahead of the peace talks next month.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the explosion in the village of Kafr Shams. Syria’s state news agency reported that several fighters of the Islamic Muthanna Movement were killed. It was not clear if they all belonged to the Muthanna Movement or other factions. The movement itself is a relatively minor Deraa-based group of Islamic insurgents.

The area where the attack occurred is in a triangle that links Damascus suburbs with the southern regions of Deraa and Qunaitra.

Army of Islam leader Zahran Alloush was killed Friday in a Syrian regime airstrike that targeted the group’s headquarters during a meeting. A number of senior commanders of the Army of Islam and those of Ahrar al-Sham and the Faylaq al-Rahman groups were also killed.

His death may have contributed – at least partially – to a delay in an agreed-on pullout of thousands of militants and their families from neighborhoods on the southern edge of Damascus.

Khaled Abdel-Majid, a Damascus-based Palestinian official, said in a statement Sunday that the agreement had stumbled following Alloush’s killing. Buses that were to transport the fighters from Yarmouk were supposed to pass through Army of Islam-controlled Bir al-Qasab area in the southeastern countryside of Damascus. The pullout, supposed to start Saturday, was to involve mainly militants from Daesh. Also Saturday, fierce clashes in northern Syria between regime loyalists and rebels including the Al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front fighters have left more than 70 dead on both sides, the Observatory said.

The Nusra Front launched the assault Friday with a suicide attack against forces loyal to President Bashar Assad in Aleppo province, the group said.

Fighting raged around the village of Bashkoy, which lies at a crossroads north of Aleppo city, Abdel-Rahman said. Nusra Front and allied rebels seized several neighborhoods in Bashkoy and clashes subsided overnight, according to the Observatory.

Elsewhere, a U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian Kurds and Arab rebel groups, supported by U.S. coalition planes, captured a dam Saturday afternoon from Daesh, cutting one of its main supply routes across the Euphrates, an alliance spokesman said. Col. Talal Selo said the seizure of the Tishrin dam helps isolate the militants’ strongholds in Aleppo from their territories east of the Euphrates River, where Raqqa city, their de facto capital, is located.

DAMASCUS: At least 14 people were killed and dozens wounded in twin bomb blasts Monday in the central Syrian city of Homs, state media reported.

"The preliminary toll in simultaneous terrorist explosions that hit the city's Zahraa neighborhood is 14 dead and 132 wounded," state television reported in a news flash.

It said two explosions caused by car bombs and a blast caused by a suicide attacker wearing an explosives-laden belt hit Zahraa's main square.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group confirmed the blasts and reported at least 32 dead.

The attack came less than three weeks after ISIS claimed explosions in the same neighborhood that left 16 people dead.

ISIS has seized large parts of Homs province, including the historic city of Palmyra.

More than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria's war, which began in 2011 with anti-government protests but spiralled into a bloody conflict.

Homs city, once dubbed "the capital of the revolution", came under full government control earlier this month after a ceasefire deal with rebels.