BEIRUT, Jan 9 (Reuters) - At least 18 people, including women and children, were killed by a car bomb that went off near a school in the village of Al-Kafat in central Syria on Thursday, a monitoring group said.

The death toll was likely to rise because some of the dozens of people wounded were in critical condition, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Al-Kafat, in the central Hama province, is home to members of Syria's Ismaili Shi'ite Muslim minority. The rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, are overwhelmingly Sunni. (Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by John Stonestreet)

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