At least 45 people were killed and 110 wounded on Sunday by a car bomb and two suicide bombers in the Sayeda Zeinab district of Damascus, where Syria‘s holiest Shi’ite shrine is located, the interior ministry said. Sunni fundamentalist Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports the group. It said two operations “hit the most important stronghold of Shi’ite militias in Damascus.” State television showed footage of burning buildings and wrecked cars in the neighborhood.
Syrian state news agency SANA, quoting an interior ministry source, said a group of militants had detonated a car bomb near a public transport garage in the neighborhood’s Koua Sudan area.
Two suicide bombers then blew themselves up nearby as people were being rescued. “Bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage,” a witness told state news channel Ikhbariyah. The heavily populated area in the south of the city is a site of pilgrimage for Shi’ites from Iran, Lebanon and other parts of the Muslim world.