DAMASCUS (AFP) - At least 25 people, including women and children, were killed on Wednesday when two car bombs exploded in the central Syrian city of Homs, the state-run SANA news agency reported.

The attacks wounded another 100 people in the Karam al-Luz district, according to SANA, which blamed the bombings on "terrorists," the government's term for all those fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

"Twenty-five people fell as martyrs, including women and children, and more than 107 others were wounded after the explosion of the two car bombs," which went off a half-hour apart, SANA said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, also reported the bombings, saying they had been carried out in a mostly Alawite neighbourhood, referring to the Shiite offshoot sect to which the Assad family belongs.

Syria's uprising began as a series of peaceful protests against the Assad family's four-decade rule but escalated into a full-scale insurgency after the regime launched a devastating crackdown on dissent.

More than 150,000 people have been killed since the revolt began in March 2011 and nine million have been driven from their homes, including 2.6 million international refugees.

Homs was an epicentre of the revolt but is now almost entirely in regime hands, with small pockets of rebels holding out in besieged areas in and around the demolished Old City.