DAMASCUS: A Syrian police officer was murdered and four people were injured in a vehicle bomb attack on a Damascus police station claimed by Daesh on Wednesday.
According to the Syrian Interior Ministry, a vehicle exploded near the Barzeh police station in the capital’s north, killing a lieutenant colonel and injuring four others.
“Investigations to determine the circumstances of the incident are ongoing,” it added in a statement, releasing photographs of a twisted, burnt-out truck.
In a statement on its Telegram channels, Daesh claimed responsibility for the incident, stating its members “managed to plant and detonate an explosive device on a vehicle inside a police station.”
It was a rare jihadist attack in Damascus, which has been relatively free of such violence in recent years, particularly since the government retook the final rebel stronghold near the capital in 2018.
However, security incidents, such as explosives targeting military or civilian cars, occur on an irregular basis in Damascus.
According to the Observatory, they are sometimes used in personal conflicts or score-settling in the country, where the security situation remains precarious more than 12 years after the country’s civil war begun.
A bomb strike on a Syrian army bus outside Damascus in October 2022 killed at least 24 troops.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, located in the United Kingdom, linked the attack to Daesh cells.
Last month, state media reported that an unclaimed vehicle explosion shook another Damascus neighborhood, with the Interior Ministry reporting that two individuals were mildly injured.
The “caliphate” of Daesh, which formerly spanned large swaths of Syria and Iraq, died in early 2019 in eastern Syria.
Syria’s conflict has killed over 500,000 people, displaced millions, and destroyed the country’s infrastructure and industry.
While the front lines have mainly calmed down in recent years, significant portions of the country’s north remain ungoverned.
