Ribal Al-Assad condemns most recent suicide bombing

A suicide car bomb has killed at least 15 people and wounded 53 in the main business district of Damascus

Telegraph

APRIL 8, 2013

The bomb near a school in the Sabaa Bahrat district, which also houses the Central Bank and Finance Ministry, set cars ablaze and damaged buildings, state television footage showed.

A Damascus resident described the blast as the biggest she had heard in the capital during the two-year-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. She said large plumes of black smoke were rising from the Sabaa Bahrat district.

Car bombs and attacks on civilians are commonplace in the Syrian conflict, which the United Nations estimates has killed more than 70,000 people.

Each side has accused the other of using chemical weapons, among other breaches of international law, although it remains unproven whether such weapons have actually been fired.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said an advance team of experts had gone to Cyprus and was awaiting permission from the Syrian government to investigate the conflicting assertions.

After the car bomb blast, Syrian television showed footage of seven bodies in the street, including at least two charred corpses in the wreckage of an overturned bus. Other vehicles were still on fire, lined up in what appeared to be a car park.

A woman with a blood-covered face was carried away on a stretcher. Panic-stricken women in long black dresses and headscarves ran towards the scene. Some children in school uniform were shown in bandages.

The state TV presenter described the attack as unprecedented and said: "We only have one choice, either win or die".

Angry and terrified residents interviewed by the channel called for decisive army action. "Look at Damascus. Is this Damascus? Look what is happening to it," said a weeping man.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but each side blamed the other.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi said on state television that Monday's bombing was a response "to the great achievements of the Syrian army, especially in the Damascus countryside."

He said the Syrian army was "determined to go forward and will crush them", referring to Assad's foes.

Syria's conflict started with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule that were violently suppressed. An armed struggle ensued, forcing more than a million Syrians to flee abroad, and displacing millions more inside the country.

UN chief Ban, who met the head of the global chemical weapons monitoring body in The Hague on Monday, said the UN investigators only needed a green light from Damascus.

"We are ready," he said.

Commenting on the most recent bombing, ODFS Director, Ribal Al-Assad said:

"These were innocent civilians going about their daily business; the perpetrators of this attack display a shilling brutality and obviously have no regard for human life. My thoughts and prayers go to the families of the victims at this incredibly difficult time”