Bombings claimed by the Islamic State group have killed at least 60 people, including 25 Shiite fighters, and wounded dozens near Syria’s holiest Shiite shrine outside the capital Damascus.
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Syrian state news agency SANA, quoting an interior ministry source, said a group of militants had detonated a auto bomb near a public transport garage.
Whilst IS claim two bombers were culpable, Syrian state news organization SANA has reported that three explosions occurred during the attack.
Read Monday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says more than 100 people are wounded.
The explosions took place as representatives of Syria’s government and the opposition began gathering in Geneva for the first UN-mediated peace talks in two years. However, a negotiator from Jaish al-Islam, Mohamed Alloush, told Reuters he was going to Geneva to show that the Syrian government was not serious about seeking a political solution.
Hammond said he wanted “to acknowledge and welcome the hard decision of Syria’s High Negotiations Committee” to attend the talks, referring to a Saudi-backed opposition coalition. Hezbollah is a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and has dispatched fighters to bolster his troops against the uprising that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
Earlier in the day, de Mistura paid a courtesy visit to the opposition’s delegation in Geneva saying he is “optimistic and determined”, describing indirect peace talks between the government and the opposition as “a historic occasion” to end the country’s civil war.
The triple bombings rocked the sprawling Sayyidah Zaynab district, which was guarded by the Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah group, in the southern countryside of Damascus. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish forces, which the U.S and others have relied on in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as “terrorists, “accusing them of cooperating with its outlawed Kurdish rebels”.
“It’s enough killing our children, killing civilians”. “This confirms what the Syrian government has said over and over again – that there is a link between terrorism and those who sponsor terrorism from one side and some political groups that pretend to be against terrorism”, he said. “Shiite militant groups allied with Bashar al-Assad’s forces often use the defense of the shrine as a rallying cry for recruits”.
Virtually all parties agree that the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front be excluded.
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Mr de Mistura said he expects the talks to last six months, while a position paper he wrote for the UN Security Council which was leaked at the weekend said that even if there was a ceasefire it might be too risky for UN peacekeeping troops to monitor it.
