(Reuters) - Deadly explosions struck a Damascus district housing members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect and gunmen killed the brother of the speaker of parliament, as violence escalated in the capital.
Britain suggested offering Assad immunity from prosecution as a way of persuading him to leave power. The opposition said at least 100 more people were killed in the 19-month old revolt.
"Anything, anything, to get that man out of the country and to have a safe transition in Syria," British Prime Minister David Cameron told Al Arabiya news network in Abu Dhabi before flying to Saudi Arabia.
Syrian state media said at least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded by a deadly explosion in the Hai al-Wuroud district in the northwest of the capital.
The hilltop neighborhood is situated near a barracks and housing for elite army units, and is home to members of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Syria's rebellion in is drawn mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority.
Opposition activists said three explosions were heard in Hai al-Wuroud and at least 15 people killed. A car bomb also exploded near a shopping mall in the mixed neighborhood of Ibn al-Nafis, killing and injuring several people, they said.
Officials and their families are increasingly being targeted by assassins as violence spreads in the capital. Victims have included parliamentarians, ruling Baath party officials, and even actors and doctors seen as Assad supporters.
State television said gunmen had assassinated Mohammed Osama al-Laham, brother of the speaker of parliament, in Damascus's Midan district. No group claimed immediate responsibility.
Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned that Syria, where some 32,000 people have died in 19 months of violence, could end up a collapsed state like Somalia, prey to warlords and militias.
Opposition factions were meeting in Qatar in an effort to forge a common front. The opposition has remained divided between Islamists and secularists; civilians and armed fighters; and exiles and those working inside the country.
More than 100 people were killed across the country on Tuesday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition body based in Britain that compiles activist reports.
Air strikes killed 17 people, including women and children, in the Damascus suburb of Kfar Batna, it said. Video footage of the raid's aftermath posted on the Internet, which could not be verified, showed a toddler with a severed head and the torso of a young man, his head and limbs gathered near him by rescuers.
Insurgents killed 12 soldiers and wounded 20 in an attack on a convoy of off-road vehicles in the northern province of Idlib.
Air strikes and artillery barrages unleashed by the Syrian military in the last few weeks have devastated whole districts of the capital, as well as parts of towns and cities elsewhere.
Yet, for all their firepower, Assad's forces seem no closer to crushing their lightly armed opponents, who in turn have so far proved unable to topple the Syrian leader.
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