SYRIA: Bomb blast continues to rattle region

he shock waves from the biggest terrorist attack in Syria in more than two decades continue to rattle the region.

Diplomats from all over the world, including United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon and the U.S. State Department, condemned the Saturday morning car bomb explosion, which left at least 17 people dead and 14 injured in a crowded residential neighborhood near a security and intelligence office as well as along the way to an important Shiite Muslim shrine.

London's Asharq Alawsat newspaper, a less-than-credible mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia's royal family, said the bombing took place near a building identified as the Palestinian branch of Syria's military intelligence and cited unnamed sources saying that one victim, and perhaps the target, was a high-ranking intelligence officer. The report was quoted by Israeli media.

But even a Syrian opposition group prone to espousing conspiracy theories today discounted that possibility, saying that the "chance that a high-ranking officer may have been killed in the blast is very slim."

Syrian authorities are busy investigating the blast and have been mum about suspects or leads.

The privately owned Syrian newspaper Al Watan cited witnesses at the site, including a traffic cop, who said they had seen two charred bodies in the black sedan that held the car bomb minutes after the explosion. Imad Habib (pictured), who was injured in the bombing, said that he found the car "totally burnt and in it were two burnt persons, and another two outside it. They were all dead."

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