Syrian security forces inspecet the site of a car bomb near the revered Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zeinab, south of the Syrian capital Damascus on April 25, 2016. (AFP Photo)
Damascus, Syria:
A car bomb killed at least seven people near the revered Shiite shrine of Sayyida Zeinab, south of the Syrian capital Damascus, today, state television reported.
The bomb struck Al-Diyabiyah, a town that serves as one of the gateways for the many pilgrims from around the world who visit the Shiite holy site.
Another 20 people were wounded, state news agency SANA reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at eight. It had no immediate word on whether there were civilians among the dead.
The shrine contains the grave of Zeinab, a venerated granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed, and is known for its glistening golden onion-shaped dome.
The bomb struck a checkpoint near a construction site and left a small crater in the pavement, an AFP correspondent reported.
One of the guards manning the checkpoint told AFP his bomb detector began beeping when a suspicious pickup truck pulled up.
"We stopped the car at the checkpoint... When we began doing a manual search, they detonated the car. My colleagues were killed," he said.
The windows of a small hotel across from the checkpoint had been shattered by the force of the blast.
The hotel is mostly occupied by displaced Syrians from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite-majority towns in the northwest that are under siege by Islamist rebels.
One woman who had fled Kafraya said her young daughter, who had been traumatised by the frequent rocket fire on their hometown, thought the blast was a mortar round hitting the hotel.
The area around the shrine, which is heavily secured with regime checkpoints hundreds of metres (yards) away to prevent vehicles from approaching, has been hit by Sunni extremists of the ISIS group several times this year.
A string of ISIS bombings near the shrine in February left 134 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Observatory.
And in January, another attack claimed by ISIS killed 70 people.
Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah cited the threat to Sayyida Zeinab as a principal reason for its intervention in the civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.
More than 270,000 people have been killed and millions more been forced to flee their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The bomb struck Al-Diyabiyah, a town that serves as one of the gateways for the many pilgrims from around the world who visit the Shiite holy site.
Another 20 people were wounded, state news agency SANA reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at eight. It had no immediate word on whether there were civilians among the dead.
The shrine contains the grave of Zeinab, a venerated granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed, and is known for its glistening golden onion-shaped dome.
The bomb struck a checkpoint near a construction site and left a small crater in the pavement, an AFP correspondent reported.
One of the guards manning the checkpoint told AFP his bomb detector began beeping when a suspicious pickup truck pulled up.
"We stopped the car at the checkpoint... When we began doing a manual search, they detonated the car. My colleagues were killed," he said.
The windows of a small hotel across from the checkpoint had been shattered by the force of the blast.
The hotel is mostly occupied by displaced Syrians from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shiite-majority towns in the northwest that are under siege by Islamist rebels.
One woman who had fled Kafraya said her young daughter, who had been traumatised by the frequent rocket fire on their hometown, thought the blast was a mortar round hitting the hotel.
The area around the shrine, which is heavily secured with regime checkpoints hundreds of metres (yards) away to prevent vehicles from approaching, has been hit by Sunni extremists of the ISIS group several times this year.
A string of ISIS bombings near the shrine in February left 134 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Observatory.
And in January, another attack claimed by ISIS killed 70 people.
Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah cited the threat to Sayyida Zeinab as a principal reason for its intervention in the civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.
More than 270,000 people have been killed and millions more been forced to flee their homes since the conflict erupted in 2011.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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