DAMASCUS: A car bomb exploded yesterday near a complex housing Syrian security offices in Damascus, killing 17 people and wounding more than a dozen in the deadliest attack in the country in decades.
The explosion came hours after Syria’s foreign minister held a rare meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in New York.
Rice described the bombing as a matter of concern. “I just learned this morning about the bombing in Syria. Obviously, any activity by extremists is concerning. But I don’t know the details,” she told reporters.
Earlier Gordon Duguid, a spokesman for the State Department, said: “We condemn the bombing and all terrorist actions and send our condolences to the victims’ families.”
State-run television said that a car packed with 200 kg of explosives blew up on a highway in a southern neighborhood shattering dozens of car and apartment windows. The charred booby-trapped car was seen sitting in the street near a primary school.
The explosion knocked down part of a 13-foot high wall surrounding a security complex that houses several buildings in the Sidi Kadad area.
Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majid called the bombing a “terrorist act” and said all the victims were civilians. Anti-terror units were investigating, but officials provided no other details.
“We cannot accuse any party. There are ongoing investigations that will lead us to those who carried it out,” Abdul-Majid told state TV.
Such deadly bombings are rare in Syria, a tightly controlled country. But the country is also home to Palestinian fighters, and is close ally of the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The United States accuses Syria of being a state sponsor of terrorism and allowing militants to use its territory to cross into Iraq to carry out attacks against US and Iraqi forces.
Syria says it has an interest in fighting extremist groups like Al-Qaeda, and the secular regime of President Bashar Assad has been battling militants blamed for a string of smaller bombings and attacks against the government and diplomatic missions in recent years.
In September 2006, militants tried to storm the US Embassy in Damascus in an unusually bold attack in which three assailants and a Syrian guard were killed.
Three months earlier, a battle between Syrian security forces and militants near the Defense Ministry left four militants and a police officer dead.
