Suicide blast at Shiite shrine near Damascus wounds 14

A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle near a revered Shiite shrine in a Damascus suburb Thursday as protesters geared up for weekly Friday anti-regime protests under the banner of “Russia is the enemy of the Syrian people.” State media and witnesses said a vehicle exploded 50 meters away from the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, south of Damascus, wounding 14 people and damaging the shrine. There was “substantial damage in the area of the blast” and “the terrorist who carried out the operation was killed,” state news agency SANA said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, citing anti-regime activists, said the bomb went off near security offices, damaging the apparent target as well as the shrine, as seen in a video posted on the Internet. A witness said a van drove at speed into the parking lot at 6 a.m. and exploded among parked vehicles, including pilgrim buses. The vehicles and a nearby police station were damaged, said an AFP photographer at the site. The windows of the mausoleum were shattered and its air vents ripped out by the force of the blast, which left a 3-meter crater. Tiles on the minarets were also damaged. International envoy Kofi Annan has warned that Syria’s 15 months of deadly unrest could turn into all-out sectarian war. Most of Syria’s 22-million population are Sunni Muslims, while its minorities include Alawites, an offshoot Shiite community to which President Bashar Assad belongs. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, mainly from Syria’s ally Iran, travel each year to the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab, a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad. The area is also home to many Iraqi refugees. Also early Thursday, a car bomb in Idlib city in northwest Syria targeted a military checkpoint, the Syrian Observatory said, adding an unknown number of soldiers were killed or wounded. At least 34 people were killed in the latest violence across Syria, it said. International observers, meanwhile, visited the town of Al-Haffeh in the Mediterranean province of Lattakia, a day after Syrian authorities said the area had been “cleansed” of rebel fighters, a U.N. spokeswoman in Damascus said. Syrian rebels withdrew Wednesday from the besieged town and nearby villages that had been under intense shelling by regime forces for eight days, according to the Observatory. U.N. monitors reported the town all but deserted, with a strong stench of dead bodies and most state buildings burned to the ground. “Most government institutions, including the post office, were set on fire from inside,” the U.N. Supervisory Mission in Syria said in a statement. “Archives were burned, stores were looted and set on fire, residential homes appeared rummaged and the doors were open.” It added that “a strong stench of dead bodies was in the air and there appeared to be pockets in the town where fighting is still ongoing.” Violence on the part of the Syrian regime and armed opposition fighters has escalated in recent weeks despite a cease-fire announced as part of a six-point peace plan drafted by Annan. The Observatory said eight people, including three opposition fighters, were killed in some of Thursday’s worst violence during clashes between troops and rebels in and around the central city of Homs. Troops bombarded the rebel-held town of Rastan in Homs province “using helicopters and mortars, killing and wounding a large number of rebel fighters,” the watchdog reported. And in the southern city of Deraa, five people were killed in the Tareek al-Sad district, which was heavily shelled, the Britain-based Observatory said. Six people were killed in the central province of Hama. With the Annan plan in tatters, world powers are working toward holding a crisis meeting on Syria in Geneva on June 30 to get the plan back on track, diplomats said Thursday. Annan has called for convening the Contact Group as soon as possible but the U.S. opposes the involvement of Iran, Syria’s main regional ally. “It is not confirmed but people are still working toward something on the 30th,” a diplomat told Reuters. British Foreign Minister William Hague – who held talks Thursday with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi on the margins of a conference in Kabul – appeared to rule out Iran taking part in the Contact Group. “He underlined British concern that the possibility of Iranian attendance at any such meeting was probably unworkable,” the British Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Sharp differences have emerged between Russia and the United States, which this week accused Moscow of supplying helicopters to the Syrian army as the U.N. confirmed that attack helicopters were being used by the Syrian army against civilians in Homs. The State Department acknowledged Thursday that the Russian helicopters Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had said represented an “escalation” in the Syrian conflict were actually returning to Syria after being refurbished and were not new tools against Syrian opposition groups. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. was concerned the helicopters would be used by Assad’s regime to kill civilians. She added that three helicopters were on the way to Syria after being out of commission for at least six months. Nuland added that was “three more that can be used to kill civilians.” Opposition organizers the Syrian Revolution General Commission called for Friday protests to be held under the banner “Russia is the Enemy of the Syrian People. But others called for an alternative banner under the logo “A Call to Arms.” Amnesty International accused Syria of committing crimes against humanity to punish communities supporting rebels. The London-based group called for an international response after claiming it had fresh evidence that victims, including children, had been dragged from their homes and shot dead by soldiers, who in some cases then set the remains on fire. “This disturbing new evidence of an organized pattern of grave abuses highlights the pressing need for decisive international action,” said Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera on the release of the 70-page report entitled Deadly Reprisals. From: The Daily star