Car bomb near Syrian security base kills 17

A powerful car bomb exploded near a security complex in the Syrian capital Damascus yesterday, killing 17 civilians in the third major attack in the tightly controlled country this year.

No group claimed responsibility for the bombing on the road to the city's main airport. But Syria's interior minister described it as a terrorist attack, indicating that investigators suspect Muslim militants were involved.

"This is definitely a terrorism attack that occurred in a crowded area. This is a cowardly attack," Interior Minister General Bassam Abdel Majeed told state television.

State television said the car was rigged with 200 kgs of explosives, making it one of the biggest attacks in Damascus since a series of bombings in the early 1980s by Islamist militants.

Abdel Majeed said 17 people were killed and 14 wounded. Some witnesses said the number of wounded was much higher.

The blast was at a crowded junction leading to the Sit Zeinab shrine, popular with Shi'ite pilgrims from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. Witnesses said the security complex's main building appeared largely undamaged, although television footage showed smashed car windshields and shattered windows in nearby residential buildings and a large crater filled with water at the blast site. Footage of a nearby school, which was empty because of the weekend, showed broken glass all over classrooms. The remains of the destroyed car were strewn on the highway, witnesses said.

One witness said some people initially thought it was an earthquake when they felt the blast's force.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke out against the attack, while a state department spokesman said the US had closed the consular section of its embassy except for emergency services and would reopen on Sunday after the Eid holiday.

"It's a criminal act of terrorism that targeted the residents of the city. Unfortunately, in the years following the US war on terror, terrorism has spread even more," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told al-Arabiya television from New York.