Scores killed in Damascus as diplomacy fails to fix conference date

PanARMENIAN.Net - Eight people have been killed in a blast in the center of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

According to BBC News, the country's state news agency SANA said 50 were also wounded in the Hijaz Square explosion, which hit the offices of the railway company. Eight people were also killed by a rare blast in the town of Suweida, home to Syria's Druze minority.

Suweida has remained under government control through the conflict, and had so far been largely free of violence.

On Wednesday, November 6 blast there went off outside the headquarters of the Air Force Intelligence, the most feared security service in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said it had been a suicide car bomb and that the intelligence branch chief was among those killed.

Sana blamed the attack on "terrorists", the government's way of referring to rebels forces.

Syria's Druze minority - adherents of an offshoot of Shia Islam - numbers about 700,000. Its main leadership has so far stayed out of the conflict publicly.

The attacks come a day after the latest round of international diplomacy failed to fix a date for a long-delayed peace conference on the Syrian conflict.

Attempts to set up a conference have been going on for months amid disputes over who should attend and its agenda.

The Syrian opposition has insisted President Bashar al-Assad should resign before any talks can take begin, but the government has rejected this.

On Wednesday, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted as saying that Moscow was ready to host "informal" talks between President Assad and the Syrian opposition to begin the peace process.