Saturday August 13, 2022
اردو
Dialogue Pakistan Dialogue Pakistan
Dialogue Pakistan Dialogue Pakistan
  • Citizen Journalism
  • Pakistan
  • World
  • Sports
  • Entertainment
  • Videos
    • Feature Videos
    • In House Videos
    • Mobile Footage
    • Documentaries
  • More
    • Features
    • Health
    • Sci-Tech
    • Business
    • In Pictures
    • Facebook
News

14 killed in rare Damascus army bus bombing

by AFP October 20, 2021

AA

 14 killed in rare Damascus army bus bombing
(Photo by AFP)

A bomb attack on an army bus in Damascus killed 14 people Wednesday in the bloodiest such attack to strike the Syrian capital in four years, the SANA state news agency reported.

There was no immediate claim for the bombing but moments later shelling by government forces killed eight people in the Idlib region controlled by groups that have claimed such attack in the past.

“A terrorist bombing using two explosive devices targeted a passing bus” at a key bridge in the capital, the news agency said, reporting that 14 people had been killed and at least three wounded.

Images released by SANA showed first responders searching the charred carcass of the bus and what the news agency said was a bomb squad defusing a third device planted in the same area.

A military source quoted by the state agency said the bomb had been planted on the bus itself and was detonated as it passed near the Hafez al-Assad bridge, close to the national museum in the heart of the capital.

Also Read: PIA flight lands in Syria’s Damascus after 22 years

Damascus had been largely spared such violence in recent years, especially since troops and allied militia retook the last significant rebel bastion near the capital in 2018.

The attack is the deadliest in the capital since a bombing claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group targeted the Justice Palace in March 2017, killing at least 30 people.

Around an hour after the Damascus attack, Syrian regime shelling struck the war-ravaged town of Ariha, in the northwestern region of Idlib.

– Idlib carnage –

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rockets struck a busy area at the time children were heading to school.

Three children were among those killed, the Britain-based war monitoring group said.

An AFP reporter saw at least five dead bodies as first responders treated the wounded and scenes of chaos filled the streets of Ariha.

“At 8 am (0500 GMT) we woke up to the bombardment. The children were terrified and were screaming,” said Bilal Trissi, a father of two who lives nearby.

“We didn’t know what to do or where to go and we didn’t see anything because of all the dust around us,” he told AFP.

“They bombed us in our neighbourhood and in the market. There are children who died and people who lost their limbs… We don’t know why, what are we guilty of?”

The Damascus bombing will challenge the government’s assertion that the decade-old war is over and stability guaranteed for reconstruction efforts and investment projects to begin in earnest.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad has been striving to claw itself out of international isolation and had been making inroads in recent months.

The conflict that erupted with the brutal repression of unarmed protests demanding regime change in 2011 has left around half a million people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

– Conflict on standby –

It also led to the largest conflict-induced displacement since World War II, with half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million forced to flee their homes at one point.

Assad’s position once held by a thread, with his forces and their allies controlling barely a fifth of Syrian territory, but Russia’s military intervention in 2015 marked the start of a long and bloody fightback.

Also backed by Iran and its proxy militias, government forces have recaptured nearly all key cities in the country, with US-backed Kurdish forces still running the northeast.

The Islamic State’s once-sprawling caliphate, that straddled swathes of Iraq and Syria, inexorably shrank to its death, which came in eastern Syria in early 2019.

Since then, the Syrian government’s main focus has been the northwestern region of Idlib, where many of the rebels forced to surrender in other parts of the country have gathered.

The area is dominated by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which includes leaders of Al-Qaeda’s former Syria franchise and over which Turkey has some sway.

HTS has not claimed attacks in Damascus in years however.

The remnants of IS in eastern Syria have gone underground but continue to harass government and allied forces, mostly in desert areas, in hit-and-run attacks.

A truce deal brokered by Turkey and Russia, the two main foreign players in the Syria conflict, has effectively put fighting in Idlib on standby.

Sporadic flareups have kept the egion on edge, however, and Wednesday’s shelling of Ariha was one of the most serious violations of the truce deal.

Assad insists he remains committed to reconquering all the territory lost to rebels at the beginning of the war, including the Idlib region.

Post Views: 361

Share This:

Previous post
Next post




Polls

Will PTI get majority in coming By-elections in 9 National Assembly Constituencies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
Most Recent
World

You can buy a Husband at India’s

August 13, 2022
Citizen Journalism

Court suspends notification to cancel license of

August 13, 2022
Entertainment

“Some people are like Scorpios who spread

August 13, 2022
Entertainment

Remembering ‘Pop Queen’ Nazia Hassan on her

August 13, 2022
August 2022
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Jul    
Related Stories for you

You can buy a Husband at India’s 700-Year-Old Groom Market

August 13, 2022

Finding your groom in a market may sound like a romantic movie script. Well, how does buying your groom from

Court suspends notification to cancel license of ARY NEWS

August 13, 2022

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Saturday suspended the Interior Ministry’s notification of cancellation of ARY News No-Objection Certificate (NOC).

“Some people are like Scorpios who spread poison in other’s life”, says Bushra Iqbal

August 13, 2022

Netizens find Bushra Iqbal’s tweet about ‘people who spread poison in people’s life’ related to Tuba Anwar because of her

Dialogue Pakistan

Citizen Journalism is the collection, dissemination and analysis of news by the people for the people especially by the means of internet. Dialogue Pakistan is the country’s first citizen journalism portal to provide Pakistanis an opportunity to get themselves heard aiming to encourage citizen journalism inculcated with ethical values.

Quick Links

اردو
About Us
Advertise
Careers
Contact

Category

Citizen Journalism
Pakistan
World
Sports
Entertainment
Features

Download our APP

Social Platforms

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
Copyright 2022.Dialogue Pakistan. All Rights Reserved.