Damascus car bombing attacks leave 20 dead

A car bomb killed 20 people in Damascus on Sunday and wounded dozens more, the Syrian foreign ministry said, the first such bombing in the Syrian capital since a series of suicide attacks in March.

A Syrian boy stands next to the cordoned off area at the site of a suicide bomb attack in the capital Damascus' eastern Tahrir Square district, July 2, 2017. Source: AFP

The authorities said it was one of three car bombs that were meant to be blown up in crowded areas of the capital on Sunday, the first day back to work from the Eid al-Fitr holiday. Security forces pursued and destroyed the other two.

Officials said the bombers had been prevented from reaching their intended targets, otherwise the casualty toll would have been higher.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Damascus was hit by two separate, multiple suicide bomb attacks in March, one of them claimed by Islamic State and the other by the Islamist insurgent alliance Tahrir al-Sham.

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