Bombs planted on a military bus have killed 14 Syrian soldiers in the centre of Damascus, state media reported, denting the regime’s claims of having secured the capital.
Hours later on Wednesday in north-western Syria, artillery shelling by forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad killed 13 people in a town under TurkeyтАЩs sphere of influence, monitoring groups said.
The attack on the town of Ariha in Idlib governorate during school drop-off time resulted in the heaviest reported civilian death toll in one day since a proxy war between Russia and Turkey in the region renewed last month.
The two countries were on the verge of war over Idlib in February and March 2020, in a culmination of the internationalisation of the Syrian civil war, before Moscow and Ankara pulled back from the brink.
Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015 enabled the regime to overrun rebel areas in Damascus and its surrounding area. Russian firepower restored other cities and rural areas, mostly along an axis running north and south of Damascus, to the regime.
But Russian might has not been able to end the civil war, with Moscow becoming the main actor on the diplomatic arena regarding the situation as US attention turned elsewhere.
The civil war broke out after the regime cracked down on the revolt in March 2011 against five decades of Assad family rule over Syria.
The majority Sunni country has been dominated by members of its Alawite minority since mostly Alawite officers, among them Assad’s father Hafez, took power in the 1963 coup.
The official Syrian news agency quoted a military source as saying that the two bombs went off at 6.45am while the military bus was near a main intersection during the morning rush hour in Damascus.
The bombs were “attached to the bus” before it neared the Hafez Al Assad Bridge, a main flyover in the centre of the city, the source said. A third device was dismantled on site where it fell off after the explosion.
The site is a few hundred metres away from the agency’s offices, the Interior Ministry and the Four Season Hotel, one of the most expensive hotels in Damascus, where UN staff stay.
тАЬWe will chase these terrorists who committed this heinous crime wherever they are,тАЭ Interior Minister Mohammad Khaled Al Rahmoun said while inspecting the explosion site.
He said an investigation would be launched.
Pictures on state television, which described the blast as тАЬterrorist bomb attack”, showed the charred bus as medics were trying to remove bodies.
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