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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Nine dead in Damascus suicide bomb |
| 2012-04-28 |
| BEIRUT: A suicide bomber killed nine people and wounded 20 outside a central Damascus mosque on Friday, Syrian state television said, in another blow to a peace plan that the United Nations says President Bashar Assad has failed to honor. The blast ripped through worshippers at the Zain Al-Abideen mosque, which was under heavy security for Friday prayers, often a launchpad for anti-Assad protests, opposition activists said. State media said security officials were among the wounded. “We had been trying to go pray in the area but they stopped us at a checkpoint. Security weren’t letting us in because there are usually protests there,” one anti-Assad activist told Reuters in neighboring Lebanon. “Then we heard the blast. It was so loud and then ambulances came rushing past us,” the activist added. “I could see a few body parts and pieces of flesh on the road. The front of a restaurant looked destroyed. People were screaming.” State television showed images of blackened flesh and a mangled hand lying on a motorway underpass as soldiers and police cleared the area to make way for ambulance crews. A resident who spoke to security officials at the scene said a man had approached soldiers near the mosque and detonated a bomb belt when challenged. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Earlier, a loud blast was heard in the capital’s al Sinaa district near a garage used by government buses and pro-Assad militiamen tasked with preventing demonstrations. Shopkeepers said the first blast hit a black Mercedes, which caught fire. The driver was wounded but no one else was hurt. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2012-04-28 02:12 |