A suicide car bomber pursued by security forces blew himself up in eastern Damascus on Sunday, killing 21 people, in the deadliest attack to hit the Syrian capital in months.

Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said security forces intercepted three car bombers on their way into the city early in the morning.

State television said two of the vehicles were blown up on the outskirts of the city but a third managed to reach the Tahrir Square district, where the driver was surrounded but able to detonate a bomb.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but previous deadly attacks in Damascus have been claimed by Isis and rival jihadist factions.

The UK-based Observatory said 21 people were killed in the bombing, including at least seven members of pro-regime security forces and two civilians. It had not identified the remaining victims. It said at least 12 other people were wounded in the blast.

The Syrian state news agency Sana quoted an interior ministry statement as saying two of the vehicles had been “destroyed” at a roundabout on the road to the city’s airport.

The driver of the third blew himself up while being pursued, it said, “killing a number of civilians, injuring others, and causing material damage to public and private properties.”

Yara, 23, who lives near Tahrir Square, said her apartment had been rattled by the blast. “It was like war had returned after we felt that it had faded away,” she said. “I haven’t left the house yet today – I’m not afraid any more, but I just want to do nothing today.”

Hours after the blast, security was still tight at checkpoints around the city centre although local authorities had reopened some streets leading to Tahrir Square.



Damascus has been spared the large-scale battles that have devastated other major Syrian cities during the country’s six-year civil war but dozens of people have been killed in bombings, usually on the outskirts.

In March, two suicide bomb attacks in Damascus killed several dozen people, most of them at the Palace of Justice courthouse near the Old City. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.



Also in March, a double suicide attack in the capital killed scores of people, most of them Iraqi Shia pilgrims. That attack was claimed by the Tahrir al-Sham alliance of Islamist insurgents, which is spearheaded by a jihadist group formerly known as the Nusra Front.

Syrian government forces, which have defeated rebel fighters in several suburbs of Damascus over the last year, are currently fighting in the Jobar and Ain Tarma areas on the capital’s eastern outskirts.