18 dead as major suicide bomb strikes Damascus
Print Edition
A SUICIDE car bomber pursued by security forces blew himself up in eastern Damascus yesterday, with a monitor reporting 18 killed in the deadliest attack to hit the Syrian capital in months.
Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said security forces intercepted three car bombers on their way into the city early yesterday morning.
State television said two of the vehicles were blown up on the outskirts of the city.
A third managed to reach the eastern Tahrir Square district, where the driver was surrounded but able to detonate a bomb.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but previous deadly attacks in Damascus have been claimed by the Islamic State group and rival jihadist factions.
The Observatory, a Britain-based monitor, said 18 people were killed in yesterday’s bombing, including at least seven members of pro-regime security forces and two civilians. It had not identified the remaining victims.
It said at least 12 other people were wounded.
Syrian state news agency SANA quoted an interior ministry statement as saying two of the vehicles had been “destroyed” at a roundabout on the road to the city’s airport.
“The driver of the third blew himself up while being pursued, it said, “killing several civilians, injuring others, and damaging public and private properties.”
A woman whose balcony had collapsed and whose living room was a mess of broken glass and shattered masonry, with pictures and curtains strewn across the floor said her daughter had been taken to hospital after being injured by flying glass.
Tahrir Square resident Mohammad Tinawi said that he had heard “gunfire about 6am, then an explosion which smashed the glass of houses in the neighborhood.”
He said he had seen Red Crescent volunteers treating two wounded soldiers. A shopkeeper confirmed that the explosion had gone off at around 6am.
Hours after the blast, security was still tight at checkpoints around the city center although local authorities had reopened some streets leading to Tahrir Square.
University exams that were supposed to be held yesterday near the site of the first two blasts were postponed.
Damascus has been spared the large-scale battles that have devastated other major Syrian cities during the country’s six-year civil war.
But dozens of people have been killed in bombings, usually on the outskirts of the capital.
In mid-March, bomb attacks on a courthouse and restaurant in central Damascus killed 32 people. That rare assault in the heart of the city, which remains under government control, was claimed by IS.
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