“To call for boycotting the elections, that’s the equivalent of calling for a boycott of the people,” Assad said. “And how can you boycott the people of whom you consider yourself the representative?

“So I don’t think that they have any kind of weight or significance within Syria,” Assad said in remarks translated into Russian.

Assad said religious extremists and al-Qaida members from abroad are among the forces fighting his government.

“There are foreign mercenaries, some of them still alive. They are being detained and we are preparing to show them to the world,” he said.

Assad’s last interview was with ABC’s Barbara Walters in December.

It was significant that Wednesday’s interview was given to Russia state media. Russia has been Syria’s most powerful and loyal ally over the course of the uprising, selling weapons to the regime and blocking action against Damascus at the U.N. Security Council.

The Assad regime’s crackdown on a 14-month-long popular uprising has left thousands dead and prompted international condemnation. More than 200 U.N. observers have been deployed throughout Syria to monitor a cease-fire agreement, which has been repeatedly violated by both sides since it took effect on April 12.

In a fresh blow to the peace effort, the international monitors have been caught up in the violence as well.

A team of observers was evacuated from a tense town in northern Syria on Wednesday, one day after a roadside bomb hit their convoy and left them stranded overnight with rebel forces, a U.N. spokesman said.

The team’s vehicles were struck by the blast Tuesday during a mission in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun. None of the observers was wounded, but they had to spend the night with rebels in the area.

Tuesday’s attack, which came minutes after witnesses said regime forces gunned down mourners at a funeral procession nearby, dealt a fresh blow to international envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan and the U.N. effort to monitor compliance with a troubled cease-fire agreement. The deal already has been tested by relentless violence from both sides, and fears about the observers’ safety could raise doubts about its effectiveness.

The bombing was at least the second time the U.N. observers have been caught up in Syria’s violence. Last week, a roadside bomb struck a Syrian military truck in the south of the country just seconds after the Norwegian team leader Maj. Gen. Robert Mood rode by in a convoy.

Syria-based U.N. spokesman Hassan Seklawi said U.N. members picked up the team around noon Wednesday.

“They left in one convoy in the direction of Hama,” Seklawi said referring to a central city south of Khan Sheikhoun.

Even as violence grips the nation, Assad told the Russian TV station that his country supports his reform agenda.

He pointed to recent parliamentary elections, saying Syrians “up to this time support the course of reform.”

The government has praised the May 7 vote as a milestone in promised political reforms. But the opposition boycotted the polls and said they were orchestrated by the regime to strengthen Assad’s grip on power.

Also Wednesday, a Turkish official said the situation in Syria and discussions on the possibility of a NATO intervention were bound to come up during a NATO summit in Chicago next week. So far, the international community has shown little appetite for getting involved in another Arab nation in turmoil.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Turkish government regulations, said NATO could become involved if the U.N. Security Council approved an intervention — a move considered unlikely given Russia and China’s support of Assad — or if any of the NATO members feels threatened and calls for protection from the alliance.

The official said Turkey would call for NATO protection if “our national security and national interests are threatened or if there is an attack from Syria,” though he added “there is no such situation at present.”

Syria’s state-run TV, meanwhile, reported Wednesday that authorities released 250 people who were involved in the uprising. Assad has issued several pardons releasing thousands of detainees since the crisis began.

The Syrian uprising began with mostly peaceful protests calling for change, but a relentless government crackdown led many in the opposition to take up arms. Some soldiers also have switched sides and joined forces with the rebels.

___

Heintz reported from Moscow. Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser contributed to this report from Ankara, Turkey.

Syrian state TV video showed dozens of bodies, some charred or dismembered, strewn in the rubble or still inside damaged cars. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw medics in rubber gloves picking through the site for human remains amid the two craters that were blasted into the asphalt.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police and security services, said 55 people were killed and more than 370 were wounded. Officials said suicide bombers detonated explosives weighing more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds).

“The house shook like it was an earthquake,” Maha Hijazi said, standing outside her home nearby.

World powers seeking to halt Syria’s unrest condemned the attack and urged all sides to adhere to a cease-fire brokered by U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

“In order to prevent another escalation of violence, we continue to call on the Syrian regime to fully and immediately implement the Annan plan,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said “the onus is on the Syrian authorities to implement a full cease-fire and begin the political dialogue required by the Annan plan,” while the U.N. Security Council said in a statement that “any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable regardless of their motivation.”

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of a team of observers overseeing the cease-fire, toured the site and said the Syrian people do not deserve this “terrible violence.”

“It is not going to solve any problems,” he said. “It is only going to create more suffering for women and children.”

Annan, too, appealed for calm.

“The Syrian people have already suffered too much,” he said in a statement.

The blast was the largest and most deadly yet in a series of bombings targeting state security buildings since last December. Most of these have been in Aleppo and Damascus, Syria’s two largest cities, which have generally stood by Assad since the popular uprising against his rule broke out in March 2011.

The government blamed the attack on armed terrorists it says are driving the uprising, which has grown into the strongest threat to the Assad family dynasty in its four decades in power.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the head of the Security Council, asking the body “to take steps against states, parties and media outlets that practice and encourage terrorism,” Syria’s state news service said.

Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, told the Security Council that a second bombing in Aleppo on Thursday also killed civilians and damaged property.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five intelligence officers were killed when a bomb targeted their car in Aleppo. It was unclear if this was the same event.

A leader of the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of anti-regime militias throughout the country, condemned the Damascus attack and denied the group was involved. Capt. Ammar al-Wawi accused the government of staging the attack to turn the world against the uprising.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but a shadowy militant group calling itself the Al-Nusra Front has claimed past attacks through statements on militant websites. Little is known about the group, although Western intelligence officials say it could be a front for al-Qaida’s Iraq branch.

Ja’afari, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the bombings were evidence of “terrorist activities” by “groups and organizations affiliated with al-Qaida.” He also claimed Syria has a list of “12 foreign terrorists” killed in Syria, including one French citizen, one British citizen and one Belgian citizen and he offered the list to the 15 Security Council members.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he had “no information” that al-Qaida was involved in Thursday’s attacks, although he repeated previous statements that intelligence indicates the group does indeed have a presence in Syria.

The scope and mystery of the bombing raised fears that Syria’s unrest is transforming from an Arab Spring-inspired call for change into a bloody Iraq-style insurgency.

The uprising began with protests calling for political reform. The government swiftly cracked down, deploying tanks and troops to quash dissent, and many in the opposition took up arms. The U.N. said weeks ago that more than 9,000 had been killed. Hundreds more have died since then.

Annan’s peace plan calls for a cease-fire to allow for dialogue by all sides on a political solution. But daily violence has undermined the plan since the truce was supposed to begin April 12, with regime forces still shelling opposition areas and rebels attacking troops.

The bombings appeared to be beyond the capabilities of the known rebel groups, mostly made up of army defectors with light arms. One organizer denied that the rebels have the means or the will to plot such attacks.

“If we had the power to do this, we would have changed the equation a long time ago,” said the organizer, who identified himself only as Abu Mustafa, speaking by phone from northern Syria. “We built bombs with fertilizer and now we have a hard time even getting fertilizer.”

Some in the opposition blamed the Assad regime.

“It wants to convince the world that if the regime falls, only terrorism will remain,” said al-Wawi, of the Free Syrian Army.

Others said the size of the attack set it apart from previous bombings.

An activist who gave only his first name of Lawrence for fear of government reprisal said he heard the booms and felt his building in Damascus shake. While previous bombings in the capital made him suspect that the government somehow staged them, Thursday’s blast was different.

“Today, there is no doubt. This was not fabricated,” he said, adding that although he didn’t know who was behind the attack, he worried it would harm the opposition.

“This will certainly affect us, media-wise and internationally,” he said. “This is not to our advantage.”

The attack was the fifth to hit Damascus since December 2011, when a car bomb killed 44 people outside an intelligence compound.

On Jan. 6, an explosion at a Damascus intersection killed 25 people, many of them police. Two car bombs on March 17 killed at least 27 people, also near intelligence and security buildings. On April 27, an explosion killed nine security officers. Syrian officials said all were suicide attacks.

___

Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Beirut, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, and Bradley Klapper and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

The team of 70 U.N. military observers now in Syria should grow to more than 100 in the coming days. It is unclear when the full team of 300 will arrive. They are to oversee a cease-fire intended to allow for talks on a political solution to the conflict.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the attack, saying the continuing violence undermines the plan, which is “possibly the only remaining chance to stabilize the country and avert a civil war.”

The peace plan has been troubled from the start, with government troops shelling opposition areas and rebels attacking military convoys and checkpoints after the cease-fire was supposed to begin on April 12. Many civilians have grown critical of the plan, saying it does not protect them from regime forces.

Although the daily death toll has dropped in recent days, international envoy Kofi Annan said Tuesday that the level of violence is unacceptable and that the plan’s failure could lead to civil war.

Wednesday’s blast, witnessed by a reporter from The Associated Press who was traveling with the United Nations, provided a close-up example of the attacks on security forces that have become almost daily events.

The bomb went off as Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, head of the U.N. observer team, drove from the capital, Damascus, to the southern city of Daraa, where Syria’s uprising began.

The explosion, about 100 meters (330 feet) behind the convoy, shattered the windows of a Syrian military truck and sent up a cloud of smoke and red sand. The truck sped into the city, where several bloodied soldiers were rushed to a hospital.

Speaking to reporters later, Mood said it was unclear whom the bomb was meant for.

“For me the important thing is really not speculating about who was the target, what was the target, but it is to make the point that this is what the Syrian people (are) seeing every day and it needs to stop,” he said. “Whoever is doing it and whoever is supporting it.”

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing. The regime blames such attacks on terrorists behind the anti-Assad uprising.

An exiled rebel leader, Col. Riad al-Asaad, warned that armed groups in the country would resume attacks because the government had flouted the cease-fire, the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Wednesday. Al-Asaad told the paper that “our people are demanding that we defend them.”

Syria’s conflict started in March 2011 with mass protests calling for political reform. The government swiftly cracked down, dispatching tanks, troops, snipers and pro-government thugs to quash dissent, and many members of the opposition took up arms to defend themselves and attack government troops.

The U.N said weeks ago that more than 9,000 people had been killed. Hundreds more have died since.

International diplomacy has failed to stop the violence, and the U.N. has ruled out military intervention of the type that helped bring down Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, in part out of fear that it could exacerbate the violence.

On Wednesday, Obama notified Congress that he is extending a “national emergency” that allows the president to impose a variety of punishments and controls against Syria. The renewal came two days before the state of emergency was set to expire.

An amateur video posted online Wednesday showed a U.N. observer telling a resident in the town of Talbiseh that the team had come to investigate a recent attack and file a report.

The resident said that was not enough, that the conflict has been going on for over a year and there were still army checkpoints around the city. Another video Wednesday from the same city showed the observers walking up to a government tank.

“Why hasn’t the army evacuated?” the resident asked. “The first clause of the Annan plan is that the army withdraw from cities. So where is the army withdrawal?”

___

Hubbard reported from Beirut.