At least nine people were killed when a car bomb exploded in the Syrian capital, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday amid reports of furious combat raging around a major airport and a military airbase in the north of the country.
Many people were seriously wounded in the car-bomb attack in a northern Damascus neighbourhood, and the death toll may climb, the group’s director Rami Abdel Rahmane said
The Observatory, which relies on a network of fighters and doctors to monitor the conflict in Syria, said the attack ocurred in an area with a large population of Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam and the minority community of President Bashar al-Assad.
State news agency SANA said the incident was a “terrorist attack” that had targeted a petrol station near a hospital.
The Syrian authorities refer to the anti-Assad rebels as “terrorists” armed and funded from outside the country.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC) activist network also reported the attack, saying large numbers of regime troops had deployed in the neighbourhood afterwards.