Soldiers stand at the site of the suicide bombing in central Damascus yesterday.
Agencies/Amman/Beirut
A senior Syrian army officer was wounded in a suicide bombing in a central Damascus district yesterday, a monitoring group said, though the military denied the report.
Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the attack.
Suicide bombings have become rare in the capital since the army pushed back rebels to the countryside almost two years ago. A blast killed several members of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle in Damascus in July 2012.
A resident contacted using Viber said the army had sealed off main streets of the neighbourhood. Security forces detained scores of people after the explosion.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a member of the hardline militant group Al Nusra Front on a motorbike blew himself up next to the car of the head of munitions and supplies in the Syrian army as it passed through Rukn al-Din quarter.
“A major general who heads the munitions and supply division of the Syrian army was injured and one of his companions killed and two hurt in the rebel attack,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory, which has a network of people on the ground.
Abdel Rahman said another bomb was detonated by the militants during clashes with the army.
But a Syrian army source denied a senior figure had been wounded. He said five people had staged the attack. All were killed or arrested.
Other than the attackers, the bombing killed one person and injured five, some of whom were in critical condition, he added.
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
Earlier, a Syrian army source on state television said the suicide bomber blew himself up in Rukn al-Din. The neighbourhood houses several security compounds, according to residents. It is also home to many Syrian Kurds.
The Observatory said many senior officials live in the area and major branches of Syria’s intelligence apparatus are based there.
Three people were killed there when an explosion struck in March 2013.
Rebel groups are entrenched to the east of Rukn al-Din in Eastern Ghouta, which has suffered from a crippling regime siege for nearly two years.
The heavily defended heart of government-controlled Damascus city has seen several major bombings over the past four years during a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people.
In other parts of Syria, the air force stepped up raids on rebel held areas in the northern city of Aleppo and Idlib province.
Aerial bombing on Sunday hit a school in Aleppo’s Saif al-Dawlah area and killed seven civilians including four children, according to the Observatory.
Probe urged into deaths in strike by US-led coalition
AFP/Beirut
A monitor and Syria’s opposition have called for an investigation into a US-led coalition strike last week that allegedly killed 64 civilians, nearly half of them children, in northern Syria.
The US military on Sunday acknowledged coalition strikes in the Birmahle area but said it was unaware of any civilian deaths.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor that tracks deaths in the war, said the strikes in the village in Aleppo province overnight Friday needed to be investigated.
“We call for a serious investigation into what happened with the strikes on Birmahle, because this is a massacre,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Syria’s opposition National Coalition, which is backed by Washington, said it could not be certain who was behind the raids on Birmahle.
But it said available information “lends credence to reports that it was a US-led coalition air strike”.
“It is absolutely vital, therefore, that such reports are taken seriously and a full investigation into the incident is carried out immediately,” Coalition spokesman Salem al-Meslet said in a statement.
The Observatory reported on Saturday that the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group had killed dozens of civilians in strikes on Birmahle between April 30 and May 1.
Yesterday, Abdel Rahman said the toll had risen to 64 civilians, including 31 children, with no IS fighters among the dead.
The Observatory relies on a broad network of sources, who Abdel Rahman said are able to identify air strikes by the coalition.
A US military spokesman said on Sunday that 50 IS fighters had been killed but “we currently have no indication that any civilians were killed in these strikes.”
He added that Kurdish forces had “reported that there were no civilians present in that location”.
Abdel Rahman said Kurdish militiamen and Syrian rebel fighters based nearby had given the coalition inaccurate information regarding IS positions in Birmahle.
“They told the coalition that there was a convoy of 10 IS cars entering the village in the middle of the night, but village residents said only a few cars unaffiliated with IS had entered,” he said.
IS had advanced in areas around Birmahle throughout the day before the strikes, but the group had no positions within the village itself, he said.
A spokesman for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) denied that Kurdish forces were in the area and said there was no co-ordination with the coalition on Birmahle.
