Suicide car bomb targets military compound in Syria

PanARMENIAN.Net - A suicide car bomb blast shook Syria's eastern city of Deir el-Zour Saturday, May 19, targeting a military compound in the latest of a wave of blasts to hit the country in recent months, the country's state media reported.

According to the Associated Press, state TV said the blast caused casualties, and showed footage of damaged buildings, smoldering cars, and trucks turned upside down by the blast. Debris filled a street that was stained with blood. The station said U.N. observers based in the city visited the site of the blast.

The state-run news agency SANA identified the site of the blast as the parking lot of a military residential compound. An opposition group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that the car bomb went off near where the city branches of the Military Intelligence Directorate and Air Force Intelligence are located.

Security agencies in several Syrian cities have been targeted by a wave of explosions since late last year, raising fears that al-Qaida-linked Islamist militants, possibly including fighters from neighboring Iraq, have made strong inroads into Syria's rebel movement.

The most recent bombing targeted an intelligence building in Damascus on May 10. It struck during morning rush hour and the high death toll - some 55 people - made it the deadliest such attack since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began in March of last year.