Syria: At Least 50 Soldiers Killed In Car Blast
At least 50 soldiers and regime loyalists died Monday in a suicide car bombing attack in the province of Hama, in central Syria, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
“A fighter from Al-Nousra Front [affiliated with al-Qaeda] blew himself (…) in the province of Hama. At least fifty people were killed,” said Rami Abdelrahman, SOHR president, a London-based organization close to the Syrian opposition.
The official SANA news agency quoted an official source, as saying that a car bomb packed with one ton of explosives blew up in the area. According to him, the explosion killed two civilians and wounded ten others. The agency said the attack occurred “near” a rural development center, without specifying if the army was deployed there. Over 9000 soldiers were killed in nearly 20 months of violence in the country, according to the SOHR, but this toll does not include the dead among the “shabbihas” (the pro-regime militia.)
In addition, an attack was carried out on Monday in the Mazze district in the west of Damascus, the Syrian television reported. “The explosion in the area of Jabal Mazze is due to a charge that has been placed by terrorists in Arous Al-Jabal, which was crowded with people,” said the official channel.
Mazze is an important residential area which houses embassies and headquarters of security forces. The attack occurred in an area parallel to the “Mazze Highway”, a four-kilometer road which leads to the famous Umayyad.
Also in the capital, more than 30 people were killed in 24 hours in the Yarmouk camp, home to 150,000 Palestinian refugees, following clashes between the army and rebels in the south of Damascus, announced Monday Palestinian sources.
Meanwhile, in Aleppo, a warehouse of 1000 square meters where the Syrian Red Crescent had stored drugs, food, baby products and blankets for the winter was burnt. “We can no longer access the warehouse for over a week because of heavy fighting, but the guards told us that everything had been burned,” said a source.
