BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least nine people were killed and several wounded in a series of mortar bomb attacks on the Syrian capital Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

The monitoring group said children were among those killed.

A Syrian source said a number of mortar bombs hit several residential areas in the capital on Saturday causing casualties among civilians. He did not give more details.

There was no claim of responsibility but insurgents based in the Eastern Ghouta region near Damascus have carried out rocket and mortar bomb attacks on the capital in the past.

Damascus, the seat of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, came under heavy bombardment in late 2014 and early 2015 in the four-year-old civil war that has killed at least a quarter of a million people.

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Louise Ireland)