Shortly after the arrival of the first delegation of Arab monitors in Damascus, two explosions occurred targeting "sub-security", killing forty four people and injuring 160 according to official data. Immediately afterwards, Syrian officials announced that al-Qaeda is responsible for the explosions. The next day, however, it was announced on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood website that the Brotherhood is responsible before it was discovered that the website was actually a scam that the son of the director of the Office of the Grand Mufti was behind.
These occurrences cast dense shadows of suspicion about the probable actor. The Syrian National Council and most Syrian activists accused the regime of being responsible for the explosions, hypothesizing that it aimed to disturb the delegation of monitors and portray itself as a victim of terrorist operations.