An Islamic State vehicle bomb on Monday in a district south of Damascus killed at least six people and possibly many more, according to the radical Sunni movement and a monitoring group.
Advertisement
Separately, rebel shelling of government-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 18 people, the Observatory said. It marked a major escalation to levels of violence unseen since the February 27th cease-fire, engineered by the US and Russian Federation, took hold.
The Islamic State (IS) extremist group claimed responsibility for the bombing in Sayeda Zeinab, a home to an important Shi’ite shrine.
SANA news agency said a suicide attacker blew up his vehicle on April 25 after he was discovered by one of the soldiers manning the checkpoint in the district of Sayeda Zeinab, a government stronghold.
Syrian aerial bombing has killed dozens of civilians in Aleppo’s residential area of Bustan al Qasr and areas under the control of rebels in the last few days, it said.
A source at Aleppo police command told SANA on Monday that shells fired by al-Nusra fighters landed in Aleppo’s al-Sulaimaniyeh neighborhood, claiming lives of four, three of them children, and injuring 19 others, many in critical conditions.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and onetime commercial center, has been bitterly contested since 2012.
The Syrian government and its opponents have exchanged blame for cease-fire violations. The UN envoy Staffan de Mistura who is leading the Geneva talks between the belligerent parties warned that the ceasefire was in trouble but said he would continue the negotiations despite the walkout by the opposition.
Advertisement
The Syrian government’s chief negotiator said on Monday that an explosion south of the capital had struck a hospital, killing some patients evacuated last week from two rebel-besieged towns in the northwestern province of Idlib. It received its first batch of humanitarian aid in over a year on Thursday. The fighting has killed more than 250,000 people, according to the United Nations, which stopped tracking casualties several months ago.
