DAMASCUS: Twin bombs killed 46 people in the Old City of Damascus on Saturday, a monitoring group said, in one of the bloodiest attacks in the heart of the Syrian capital. A roadside bomb detonated as a bus passed and a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Bab al Saghir area, which houses several mausoleums that draw pilgrims from around the world, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Several pilgrims were among the dead. The SANA state news agency reported that “two bombs planted by terrorists exploded near the Bab al Saghir cemetery in Bab Musalla, causing dead and wounded.”
Shrines are a frequent target of attack for Al Qaeda and the IS, not only in Syria but also in neighbouring Iraq. The Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum to the south of Damascus, Syria’s most visited pilgrimage site, has been hit by several deadly bombings during the six-year-old civil war. Twin suicide bombings in the high-security Kafr Sousa district of the capital in January killed 10 people, eight of them soldiers. That attack was claimed by former Al Qaeda affiliate Fateh al Sham Front which said that it had targeted Russian military advisers working with the Syrian army. It was widely seen as an attempt to disrupt UN-brokered peace talks that took place the following month which to the anger of Fateh al Sham were supported by its former rebel ally Ahrar al Sham. — AFP
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