Terrorist Blasts near Syria Shiite Shrine Kill At Least 45, Wound 110
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – At least 45 people were killed and 110 wounded on Sunday in three bomb blasts near a revered Shiite shrine south of the Syrian capital Damascus, state media reported.
State news agency SANA had earlier reported 30 people killed in the three blasts, which it said were caused by a car bomb and two suicide bombers, AFP reports.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group close to Syria's foreign-backed opposition, had initially reported eight deaths in the blasts.
Syria's television carried a breaking news alert reporting "two terrorist blasts, one of them a car bomb, followed by a suicide bomber... in the area of Sayyida Zeinab."
The Sayyida Zeinab mosque contains the grave of a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and is particularly revered as a pilgrimage site by Muslims.
It has been targeted before, including in February 2015, when two suicide attacks killed four people and wounded 13 at a checkpoint near the shrine.
Also that month, a blast ripped through a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims headed to Sayyida Zeinab, killing at least nine people, in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
