SYRIA HAS said that an accident was the cause of an explosion on a bus used by Iranian pilgrims visiting a Shia shrine near Damascus.
“There was no terrorism factor behind this incident,” said interior minister Said Sammour,
Amplifying Mr Sammour’s remarks, information ministry spokeswoman Reem Haddad said the bus entered a service station to have a tyre inflated. However it burst, shredding the rear of the bus. Three people, the driver and two petrol station attendants, were killed.
It was initially reported that there had been six fatalities. She said no one had been on the bus at the time of the explosion.
The incident took place in the suburb where the shrine housing the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter Sayeda Zainab attracts a constant stream of Iranian, Lebanese and Iraqi pilgrims.
An estimated half million Iraqi refugees, the majority Shias, have settled in this neighbourhood. Many have opened restaurants serving Iraqi cuisine and markets catering to Iraqi tastes. Most Sunni and Christian Iraqi refugees live in other parts of the city.
The blast coincided with a visit by Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, for talks with President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian officials. Syria and Iran have been allies since the war erupted between Iraq and Iran in 1980.
A bomb was originally believed to have been behind the blast because Syria has suffered several attacks in recent years.
In early 2008 Imad Mughanieh, a senior official of the Lebanese Hizbullah movement, was assassinated by a bomb planted in his vehicle parked in a residential district of Damascus.
Israel was held responsible for this killing.
In September of that year, a car bomb targeted a security compound on the highway to Damascus airport near the Sayeda Zainab area, killing 17.
This operation was blamed on Lebanon-based Muslim militants with links to al-Qaeda. In September 2007, Israeli war planes bombed a site in eastern Syria which Israel claimed was a nuclear facility being constructed secretly under North Korean guidance.
