Over 200 wounded in the attack, which Syrian state TV blamed on ‘terrorists;’ at least 18 people killed in southern province of Daraa when Syrian fighter jets bombed a rebel field hospital.
Haaretz
A car bomb killed at least 53 people and wounded more than 200 in central Damascus on Thursday when it exploded on a busy highway close to ruling Baath Party offices and the Russian embassy, Syrian television said.
TV footage showed at least four charred and bloodied bodies strewn across the street after the blast, which state media said was the result of a suicide bombing by “terrorists” battling President Bashar al-Assad.
Central Damascus has been relatively insulated from almost two years of unrest and civil war in which around 70,000 people have been killed across the country, but the bloodshed has shattered suburbs around the capital.
Rebels who control districts to the south and east of Damascus have attacked Assad’s power base for nearly a month and struck with devastating bombs over the last year.
The al Qaida-linked rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra, which claimed responsibility for several of those bombs, says it carried out 17 attacks around Damascus in the first half of February, including at least seven bombings.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll from Thursday’s attack in the Mazraa district of Damascus at 31, mostly civilians. Other activists said 40 people had died, including children from a nearby school.
Opposition activists reported further explosions elsewhere in the city after the mid-morning explosion in Mazraa.
One resident in the heart of the capital heard three or four projectiles whistling through the sky, followed by explosions.
At least one of them landed in a public garden in the Abu Rummaneh district, she said, but no one was hurt.
The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors violence via a network of sources inside Syria, said the Mazraa car bomb detonated at a checkpoint close to the Baath Party building, located about 200 meters (660 feet) from the Russian embassy.
Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted a diplomat as saying the blast blew out windows at the embassy but no employees were wounded. “The building has really been damaged … The windows are shattered,” the diplomat said.
The vehicle was carrying between 1 and 1.5 tons of explosives, Damascus Governor Bishr Sabban told Reuters.
A correspondent for Syrian television said he saw seven body bags with corpses at the scene. He counted 17 burnt-out cars and another 40 that were destroyed or badly damaged by the force of the blast, which ripped a crater 1.5 meters deep into the road.
The official SANA news agency said casualties included children at a nearby school in Mazraa, which it described as a busy residential district of the capital.
Later, the Observatory reported, two car bombs exploded outside security centers in the northeastern district of Barzeh, but there were no details of casualties.
Syrian TV said security forces detained a would-be suicide bomber with five bombs in his car, one of them weighing 300 kg.
Meanwhile, at least 18 people were killed Thursday in a bombardment by Syrian jet fighters of a field hospital in the restive southern province of Daraa, reported an opposition group. The dead included eight rebel fighters, three medics and seven civilians, added the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
#1 by K.PatrickRyan on February 22, 2013 - 6:55 pm
CIA sponsored terror.
If our government were honest, Obama would order the immediate shelling of Congress and about a dozen federal agency’s headquarters. Then, he’d order missiles to fly at the White House and he’d climb up on the roof to personally guide them in on their target.
#2 by annebeck58 on February 22, 2013 - 11:17 pm
There are a couple of things I’d like to address.
First, whenever you see, al qaeda/ al qaida. you have to remember it means the group is run by American CIA handler(s) and probably, Mossad.
When it came to what one witness said, “heard the whistling.. before the explosions”, this is telling. What car-bombs (or suicide-bombs) whistle BEFORE going off? I’d say…, NONE. So, where did these bombs come from and who sent them?
If it’s Al Qaida, it’s al- CIA- duh!
Or, could certainly be IOF, again.. (or any combination thereof).
#3 by 1bigcree Shadowhawk on February 23, 2013 - 2:49 am
This was definitely the work of Zionist CIA/Mossad. Always the Jewstream ‘Media’ will lie and twist the facts and never be counted on to report what really happened. I concur as well regarding a ‘whistling sound’ just before the explosions which left such devastation. Sounds more like an RPG than a ‘suicide bomber’. This has Mossad marks all over it. They love using explosives due to it’s devastating after effects as well as the trauma it inflicts on the witnesses and survivors. Where ever there is an event like this and the lame attempts by the JSM to term it an act of ‘Terrorists’ and in the same paragraph you read ‘Al Qaeda’ just fill in Al CIA’da/ Mossad. Of that one can be sure. What really disturbs me is this seems to always be carried out with children somewhere nearby and they wind up on the casualty list. I mourn especially for them and their parents/caretakers.
#4 by annebeck58 on February 23, 2013 - 5:48 am
You know they would have done this with innocents around as it adds to the damage– a huge psychogical element. And I don’t care if they had been, “holocausted”, one-hundred and nine times over, there is NO excuse for their actions against everyone they are murdering in order to ward-off any and all comers. It’s really past time to fight back. If only our own military would comprehend this, completely, so that rather than murder civilians for them, they’d turn their weapons on the biggest terrorists this world has known or ever will know.
Where are all of our great vets who finally get what Israhell has done? Is there a way to get these men and women to speak to enlisted men (and women) to explain how this is really going down?
I’ve had more than enough of them (Mossad, Al CIA- duh, zidiots and their zuppets)/ Why have our kids not gotten it, too?
#5 by isaac on February 23, 2013 - 5:52 pm
Mossad at work
#6 by 1bigcree Shadowhawk on February 23, 2013 - 11:16 pm
The many Veterans coming home as of recent should get . IF they don;t they are like that Chris Kyle character; and are beyond redemption.