Roadside bombs targeting a convoy of minibuses in Syria\'s Homs province killed nine people on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. \"Several explosive devices detonated as a convoy of minibuses drove past and nine passengers of one of the buses were killed,\" said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. He said the blasts occurred on the road linking Homs city to a string of villages populated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.