Suicide car bomb chase in Damascus kills at least 19

At least 19 people killed in suicide car bombing in Syrian capital of Damascus 

At least 19 people have been killed and 12 injured after a suicide bomber launched an attack in the Syrian capital of Damsscus.

Police had been chasing three suspected car bombers that were trying to enter the city, Syrian state TV said.

Police managed to stop and detonate two of the vehicles, but the third driver entered Tahrir square in the east and blew himself up after being surrounded.

State TV said the attackers had planned to bomb crowded areas in Damascus on the first working day after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“The terrorist bombings killed and wounded several civilians and caused physical damage to the area,” a police official told state news agency SANA.

A resident told news agency AFP that he “heard gunfire at around 6am, then an explosion which smashed the glass of houses in the neighbourhood”.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Over 300,000 people have died in the Syrian civil war, which started with anti-government protests back in 2011. The UN’s refugee agency estimates that over 5.5 million people have fled the country and a further 6.3 million have been internally displaced.

Damascus has remained under the control of President Bashar al-Assad and avoided much of the fighting, but it has experienced a number of suicide bomb attacks.

In March, two bomb attacks in the capital killed over 40 people – the majority of them Iraqi pilgrims visiting the Bab al-Saghir cemetery, which houses Shia mausoleums. A few days later, at least 31 people were killed in an attack on the capital’s main court complex.