Car bomb attack kills 17 in tightly controlled Syria

DAMASCUS, Syria – A brazen car bombing near Syrian security offices killed 17 people Saturday, the deadliest attack in decades that raised questions about the regime’s usually strong grip as the country tries to boost its international profile.

The explosion came hours after Syria’s foreign minister held a rare meeting in New York with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

State-run television said a car packed with an estimated 440 pounds of explosives blew up on a road on the capital’s southern outskirts, wounding dozens and shattering car and apartment windows. The charred booby-trapped car sat in the street near a school.

The blast knocked down part of a 13-foot-high wall surrounding a security service complex that houses several buildings in the Sidi Kadad neighborhood.

Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majid called the bombing a “terrorist act.” He said all the victims were civilians, although at least one of the injured was a traffic policeman.

Officials provided no other details of the attack, which was the worst since a truck bomb killed dozens of people in the mid-1980s.

“We cannot accuse any party. There are ongoing investigations that will lead us to those who carried it out,” Abdul-Majid told state TV.

Serious attacks are rare in Syria, a tightly controlled country where the government uses heavy-handed tactics to suppress dissent and maintain stability.

But the country is also home to Palestinian extremists and is a close ally of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Washington accuses Syria of being a state sponsor of terrorism and allowing militants to use its territory to cross into Iraq.

Syria denies that, arguing that it has an interest in fighting Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida. The secular regime of President Bashar Assad has been battling Muslim militants blamed for a string of smaller bombings and attacks on the government and diplomatic missions in recent years.