Car bomb kills 10 in Syria regime bastion Latakia

A car bomb exploded Wednesday in a square in the Syrian port city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 25, the official Syrian news agency SANA said.

It was one of the biggest bombings, and the highest single death toll, in Latakia since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011.

"This is rare for Latakia city, which is usually hit by rockets," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, told reporters. He said that the car bomb detonated on the northern edges of the city and "wounded dozens, including four or five in critical condition."

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which state media said was carried out by "terrorists," a term it uses to describe groups fighting to topple Assad.

Video footage on state and social media showed burning vehicles in an area also littered with the wreckage of several cars smashed by the force of the blast. Rescue workers and civilians were seen fighting the fires.

Relatively safe

Latakia, the heartland of the minority Alawite sect to which the Assad clan belongs, has so far been largely spared the violence that has ravaged Syria during more than four years of civil war.

Many Syrians displaced by violence in neighboring regions have taken refuge in Latakia province and some businesses have moved to the relative safety of the area.

Meanwhile in Damascus, two students were killed and 15 people wounded when mortar rounds hit an engineering college in the capital, SANA said.

Sunni Muslim jihadis, including al Qaeda's Syrian offshoot, the Nusra Front, control many villages in the borderlands north of the Mediterranean port city and other areas dominated by Alawites, who follow a branch of Shi'ite Islam.

More than 240,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which has spiraled from an anti-government uprising into a multifront civil war.

dr/msh (AP, AFP, Reuters)