Syria suicide attack kills 53
2013-02-01 21:22
Beirut - A suicide car bombing at a Syrian military
intelligence headquarters in Damascus province killed 53 people, a watchdog
said on Friday.
The 24 January attack, reported for the first time by the
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was carried out by the
jihadist rebel group the al-Nusra Front, the watchdog said.
The blast targeting military intelligence in the Sahsah
area of the town of Quneitra killed 53 intelligence workers including six
officers and wounded 90, the Observatory said, citing medical sources.
Several bodies of prisoners being held in the building
were found, but the cause of their deaths was unclear.
The Observatory relies on a network of medical sources
and activists on the ground for its information.
A simultaneous explosion at a checkpoint elsewhere killed
four soldiers of President Bashar Assad's army and sparked clashes in which a
number of al-Nusra Front fighters were killed, it said.
The US has placed al-Nusra, which it says is closely
linked with al-Qaeda's Iraq branch but contains mostly Syrian fighters, on its
list of terrorist organisations.
The group has claimed the majority of suicide bombings in
Syria's 22-month uprising against Assad, which has transformed into a
full-scale civil war and killed more than 60 000 people according to UN
figures.
