3 bomb blasts kill 50 in Damascus suburb

Attacks in Syria cast shadow over talks

Syrians gather where three bombs exploded in Sayyda Zeinab, a predominantly Shiite Muslim suburb of Damascus, on Sunday in this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA.
Syrians gather where three bombs exploded in Sayyda Zeinab, a predominantly Shiite Muslim suburb of Damascus, on Sunday in this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA.

GENEVA -- A triple bombing killed at least 50 people in a predominantly Shiite suburb south of the Syrian capital of Damascus on Sunday.

photo

AP

Smoke rises over Sayyda Zeinab, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, on Sunday after a triple bombing in this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA.

Separately, a U.N. mediator met with an opposition group that is threatening to boycott peace talks to end the country's five-year civil war.

The attacks were claimed by militants from the Islamic State group, and Syria's delegate to the U.N.-sponsored peace talks said the violence confirmed the connection between "terrorism" and "some political groups" -- a reference to those who oppose President Bashar Assad.

The blasts went off in the Damascus suburb of Sayyda Zeinab, about 600 yards from one of the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims. Syria's state news agency SANA said the attackers detonated a car bomb at a bus stop and that two suicide bombers then set off more explosives as rescuers rushed to the area.

State TV showed several burning cars and a scorched bus, as well as blown-out windows, twisted metal and large holes in the facade of a nearby apartment building. The golden-domed Shiite shrine itself was not damaged.

At least 50 people were killed, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said, with more than 100 wounded.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition group that monitors the conflict, said at least 63 people were killed, including 25 pro-government Shiite fighters. It said the dead fighters included Syrians and foreigners.

The suburb is one of the first areas where Lebanon's Hezbollah group sent fighters in 2012 to protect it from Sunni extremists who vowed to blow up the shrine. Hezbollah and Shiite groups from Iraq are known to have fighters in the area.

A website affiliated with the Islamic State group said the attacks were carried out by members of the Sunni Muslim extremist group, which controls large areas in both Syria and Iraq.

Peace talks

The bombings cast a shadow over the Geneva talks, the first U.N. effort since 2014 to try to end the conflict that has killed at least 250,000 people, forced millions to flee the country, and given an opening to Islamic State militants to capture territory.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry appealed to both sides "to make the most of this moment, to seize the opportunity for serious negotiations, to negotiate in good faith with the goal of making concrete measurable progress in the days immediately ahead."

"Now, while battlefield dynamics can affect negotiating leverage, in the end there is no military solution to this conflict," Kerry said. "Without negotiations, the bloodshed will drag on until the last city is reduced to rubble and virtually every home, every form of infrastructure, and every semblance of civilization is destroyed."

For the first time Sunday, the United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura met briefly with the main opposition bloc, saying he is "optimistic and determined." No details were immediately available on the discussion, but the opposition was expected to press for progress on relieving human suffering in Syria before entering into formal talks.

A top U.N. official also paid a "courtesy visit" to the hotel where representatives of the Syrian government are staying, the U.N. said.

Members of the opposition, the Higher Negotiations Committee, said Saturday night that they would not sit down with the government or engage in any formal negotiations until sieges were lifted and bombardment of civilians stopped -- measures mandated by specific U.N. resolutions on Syria as well as by international law.

Higher Negotiations Committee spokesman Salem al-Mislet told The Associated Press that the violence against civilians must stop first, saying the U.N. Security Council should put "pressure on Russia to stop these crimes in Syria." Moscow, which began its airstrikes in Syria in September, is a major Assad ally, along with Iran.

"We are here to ensure that Syria is free of dictatorship and free of terrorism," al-Mislet said. "We are here to make this a success no matter how long it takes."

But Bashar Ja'afari, the head of the Syrian delegation, criticized the opposition in remarks to reporters.

"Those who speak about preconditions are coming to this meeting in order to derail it," he said. "With the opposition's delegation not showing up, it shows that they are not serious and irresponsible at a time when Syrians are being killed."

Ja'afari added that the Damascus-area bombings "confirms what the Syrian government has stated before -- that there is a link between terrorism and the sponsors of terrorism from one side, and some political groups, who claim that they are against terrorism."

Assad's government has long referred to all those fighting to overthrow him as terrorists, but has agreed to negotiations with some armed groups in the latest talks.

While virtually all parties agree that the Islamic State and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front should be excluded from the talks, the two sides are divided over Ahrar al-Sham and the Army of Islam. The mainstream opposition views both as fellow rebels, despite their ideological differences, while Syria's government and Russia view them as extremists.

The opposition also has accused the U.S. of softening demands for Assad's departure as it focuses on combating Islamic State. Syrian government forces, backed by a Russian air campaign now in its fifth month, are making progress against Islamic State militants and rebel forces supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.

Opposition officials cited in Arabic media said that a recent meeting between Kerry and a Syrian opposition leader, Riad Hijab, was "disastrous," with the top U.S. diplomat said to have pressured the opposition to soften its demands and saying that Assad would have the right to run in future elections.

Al Hayat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, in its main opinion piece on Sunday accused Kerry of taking the Assad government's side. The U.S. and Europe are being short-sighted in focusing on the refugee and terrorism threat, the newspaper said, because allowing the regime to effectively stay in power would mean Syria and the region would be condemned to instability over the longer term.

While major powers agreed as far back as June 2012 that a transitional government would take over with full executive powers, Assad seems ready to offer the opposition at best a limited role. "The Syrian government is in favor of forming an expanded national government," Ja'afari said on Sunday.

Qadri Jamil, a former Syrian deputy prime minister who is an opposition leader close to Moscow, says that demands for Assad's departure won't help in reaching a settlement. "It's premature to discuss Assad's fate -- if we force him out, the whole state will collapse," he said in an interview in Geneva.

Meanwhile, backed by Russian air power, Syrian government forces are pressing home their advantage. The U.S. is continuing to ask Russia to use its influence with Assad's government to ensure immediate and unconditional humanitarian access, especially to besieged areas, a U.S. official said.

Fighting terrorism "won't happen without ending Russia's aggression," al-Mislet said. "Russia has fought everything in Syria other than terrorism."

Refugees in Jordan

The number of Syrian refugees stranded on Jordan's border and waiting for permission to enter has risen to 20,000, with 4,000 to 5,000 more arriving in the remote desert area every month, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in the kingdom said Sunday.

In recent months, Jordan has permitted only several dozen refugees to enter each day, leading to rapidly growing crowds of Syrians, including women and children, who are stuck in two areas along the Syrian-Jordanian border.

Jordanian authorities have cited security concerns for the bottleneck, saying many refugees come from areas controlled by the Islamic State group and need to undergo strict vetting. International aid officials have urged Jordan to speed up the process and move refugees quickly to the U.N.-run Azraq refugee camp, which is still more than half empty and could house thousands of newcomers.

Andrew Harper, the refugee agency chief in Jordan, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he is working with Jordanian officials to provide the "most basic necessities" to refugees stuck in the desert. It's challenging because the nearest town is more than 90 miles away, Harper said. The U.N. understands the Jordanian security concerns, but is also working with local officials to try to expedite the vetting, he added.

Despite such efforts, the refugee agency is also preparing for the possibility of a continued rise in the number of refugees into the summer, at the current rate of 4,000 to 5,000 every month, Harper said.

Earlier Sunday, Qasem al-Zoubi, the head of Jordan's statistics department, confirmed preliminary census results showing that about 1.3 million Syrians live in the kingdom, or twice the number of registered Syrian refugees.

In appealing for more aid, Jordanian officials usually cite the total number of Syrians in the country, including those who arrived before the outbreak of the 2011 Syria conflict, often in search of work. The United Nations has registered about 635,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan since 2011.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Karin Laub and Albert Aji of The Associated Press; by Anne Barnard of The New York Times; by Patrick J. McDonnell and Nabih Bulos of the Los Angeles Times; and by Henry Meyer and Victoria Stilwell of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 02/01/2016

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