The 2008 Damascus car bombing is a car bombing that occurred on September 27, 2008 in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The explosion left 17 people dead and 14 injured. It was reported that a car, laden with 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of explosives detonated in the Sidi Kadad suburb of the capital, at approximately 8:45am. The blast occurred roughly 100 metres from a security installation on the road to Damascus International Airport at an intersection leading to the Sit Zeinab shrine, popular with Shia pilgrims from Iran and Lebanon. Security forces cordoned off the area.
It was the first major explosion in Syria since the car bomb assassination of Imad Mughniyah, a high-ranking military commander in Hezbollah in February 2008, and also the most lethal bomb attack in Syria since 1996. It was the deadliest since a spate of attacks in the 1980s blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood left nearly 150 dead.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Such attacks are rare in Syria and the blast is being seen as the worst threat to national security in many years.
Read more about 2008 Damascus Car Bombing: Background, Target, Perpetrators, Reactions, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words car and/or bombing:
“Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Did all of us feel interested in bombing buildings only when the men we slept with were urging us on?”
—Jane Alpert (b. 1947)