DAMASCUS (AFP) — A car bomb exploded near a Shiite shrine in southern Damascus on Saturday killing 17 people and wounding 14 others, in one of the deadliest attacks in a dozen years, state television said.
The car packed with 200 kilos (440 pounds) of explosives blew up near a security checkpoint on a road to the Damascus international airport at an intersection leading to the Sayeda Zeinab neighbourhood, it said.
All the victims were civilian passers-by, the channel added.
The attack came at 8:45 am (0545 GMT) in the morning rush-hour in a teeming neighbourhood, the state-run SANA news agency said, quoting a Syrian official.
Sayeda Zeinab is popular among Shiites from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq who go there on pilgrimage to pray at the tomb of Zeinab, a grand-daughters of the Prophet Mohammed.
On Wednesday the official news agency SANA reported that religious tourism to Shiite shrines generates around 40 million dollars each year.
A Syrian counter-terrorism unit is investigating the attack, the agency said. The target of the bombing was not immediately known, and journalists were prevented by security forces from approaching the scene of the blast.
The blast is the worst to rock Syria since February when Hezbollah commander Imad Mughnieh was killed by a car bomb in Damascus.
The Lebanese Shiite militant group blamed Israel for the murder, but the Jewish state denied any involvement.
Mughniyeh, a shadowy figure on America's most wanted list for more than 20 years, was linked to notorious attacks against Western and Israeli targets in the 1980s and 1990s.
Syria described his killing as a "cowardly and terrorist act."
Saturday's attack also comes days after the Lebanese authorities announced on September 22 that Syria had sent reinforcements to the border between the two neighbours.
Syria said the move was for internal security reasons and to combat smuggling.
In August, Syria confirmed the assassination of top army general Mohamed Sleiman who was described by the Arab media as having been the government's liaison with Hezbollah.
"Sleiman, an officer of the Syrian Arab Army, has been assassinated," Butheina Shaaban, an adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on August 6, adding only that an investigation was under way.
The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat said Sleiman was a senior Syrian officer "in charge of sensitive files and closely linked to the Syrian top brass."
On Thursday the head of the UN atomic agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, revealed that the watchdog's probe into alleged illicit nuclear work in Syria has been delayed because the agency's contact man in Syria had been murdered.
He did not reveal the identity of the contact.
"The reason that Syria has been late in providing additional information (is) that our interlocutor has been assassinated in Syria," ElBaradei told a closed-door session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board. A recording of his remarks was obtained by AFP.
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