The Syrian government yesterday denounced the United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon as "biased" and accused the West of conspiring to install Islamist and Al-Qaeda regimes across the Middle East.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph in Damascus, Faisal Mukdad, the deputy foreign minister and senior government spokesman, claimed most of those rebelling against Bashar al-Assad´s rule were "criminals and drug-dealers".

Rejecting any blame for the apparent collapse of the ceasefire deal, he insisted it was the rebels who were "escalating their attacks" and that the Syrian regime had the right to defend itself.

He also claimed the United States and France were openly trying to ensure the peace plan´s failure, with the French foreign minister Alain Juppe, in particular, "calling for war".

"This is what the West wants - extremist and al-Qaeda forces controlling the whole region," he said.

Mr Mukdad´s message of defiance came shortly after two huge bomb blasts hit the restive town of Idlib, killing as many as 20 people and shattering the relative calm that had pervaded the city since the recent arrival of two UN peace monitors.

The regime blamed "terrorists" for the explosions, which targeted the Air Force Intelligence headquarters and the Military Intelligence building and killed several security personnel.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Mr Mukdad said there were now both al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood elements to the Syrian opposition, as well as a high criminal element, and claimed they had breached the ceasefire 1,600 times.

"Criminals are a big force - something like 59,000 who were drug smugglers, drug dealers, arms smugglers, ordinary criminals who were inside and outside Syria when these developments started," he said. "How can we control them?"

He also attacked the the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, who last week said that the Assad regime was in contravention of the ceasefire by not withdrawing heavy weaponry and suggested it was continuing to shell civilian areas.

"He is biased - very biased," Mr Mukdad said. "We may forgive him for some of his statements but now the UN monitors are in Syria he should base his statements on what they are saying."

Mr Mukdad also gave the highest government estimate yet of its casualties in the uprising, saying that more than 6,000 soldiers, police, other security forces and "pro-regime civilians" had been killed. He refused to be drawn on the overall casualty list - activists claim that more than 9,000 civilians and rebels have been killed by the regime.

The Syrian government is confident it has managed to reassert control over the country since protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad reached a peak. Either because of its prior use of military force to quell rebellious cities or because of the arrival of a handful of UN monitors to oversee the Kofi Annan peace plan, the level of violence has dropped.

But there are regular bombings and rocket attacks in different parts of the country, highlighted by yesterday´s attacks in the city of Idlib, where at least nine people and as many as 20 were killed. There was also a rocket attack on the Central Bank in Damascus.

The Syrian pro-government al-Ekhbariya TV aired footage of the aftermath of the Idlib bombs, showing cars reduced to grey twisted cinders, blood stains on the pavement and concrete debris.

Residents living nearby cried in panic into the camera and spoke out angrily against the Syrian opposition. "Is this the freedom they want?" asked one man standing among the rubble.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, with the government and the rebels blaming each other.

Colonel Khaled Hamod, a Free Syrian Army commander from Idlib told The Daily Telegraph that the explosion at the Air Force Intelligence headquarters was the result of an internal feud.

"There has been a major split in the ranks of the security building," he said. "Some of the officers wanted to defect. Men from inside fabricated this explosion to gloss over the rift, and kill those that were in support of us. The Free Syrian Army did not do this."

Activists said that the head of the Air Force Intelligence headquarters, Ali Ibrahim al-Yousef, died in the attack along with at least three other personnel who they said had not yet defected but were sympathetic to the opposition. (© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012. 05/01/12)