20 killed in Damascus suicide car bombing attacks

At least 20 people were killed and 30 others were wounded when three suicide car bombing attacks hit Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday, pro-government Ekhbaria TV reported.

The residents of Damascus woke up Sunday morning to three loud explosions, which later turned out to be carried out by three suicide bombers.

The cars caught attention from security personnel who later hunted them down. Two cars exploded near the airport road at the entrance of Damascus before reaching their targets inside the city, while the third escaped and exploded at the Ghadir roundabout near the Tahrir Square in eastern Damascus.

Most of the victims were reported in the third blast near the Tahrir Square, where 56 cars were damaged as well as the facades of three residential buildings, a military source told Xinhua.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the terrorists intended to detonate the cars inside crowded areas in the capital, as people were back to work after a week-long holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor group, said that 18 people were killed and 15 others were wounded in the explosions, among which 10 were killed in the Tahrir Square blast.

The bombings happened at a time when intense battles have been raging in rebel-held areas in eastern Damascus between the Syrian army and the Failaq al-Rahman group, which has an alliance with the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

A day earlier, activists accused the Syrian army of carrying out an attack with chlorine gas in the Ayn Tarma area in eastern Damascus, a claim flatly denied by the Syrian army, which said in a statement that the rebels were lying to cover their losses.

Failaq al-Rahman renewed the accusation on Sunday, saying the Syrian army launched a second attack with chlorine gas within 24 hours.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said fighting has been raging in Jobar and Ayn Tarma, both neighborhoods in the Eastern Ghouta region east of Damascus.

Battles in eastern Damascus have intensified since last month, when the Syrian army started an operation to retake Ayn Tarma and Jobar from the rebels, who have been excluded from the de-escalation zones' deal last May.

The deal brought in relative calm, but the al-Qaida-linked groups were excluded. And the Syrian army wanted to expand the security perimeters around the capital by attempting to dislodge the militants from those areas.