DAMASCUS: Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility on Monday for a suicide attack hours earlier on a regime-controlled neighborhood in Damascus, the group said via Twitter.

On Monday morning, a group of rebels on motorcycles attacked the Rukn Al-Din neighborhood and detonated a suicide bomb when Syrian security forces came near, a security official told AFP.

“When they realized they could not escape, one of them detonated a suicide belt he was wearing,” he said, saying security forces killed the remaining attackers. The attack took place near a military building used by the Syrian army’s logistics department. “With the help of God, three of our lions were able to infiltrate the logistics building,” Al-Nusra posted on Twitter.

The security official denied that the department’s head, Gen. Mohammad Eid, had been targeted, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast had wounded Eid and killed one of his security guards.

The local Hisham Sinan hospital told AFP that six people were wounded in the blast.