Syria ties Israel to Damascus bus bombing that killed 14 soldiers

Some unconfirmed reports indicate that the 14 casualties were all officers in the Iranian army.

By Aryeh Savir/TPS, World Israel News Staff

Syria’s Foreign Ministry has tied Israel to the bus bombing in Damascus that killed 14 soldiers in Damascus on Wednesday, saying that the attack was another attempt by Israel to destabilize the war-torn country.

A military bus driving under the Hafez al-Assad bridge near the national museum in the heart of Damascus, exploded, killing 14 passengers and injuring others, the deadliest attack in the Syrian capital in four years.

Two bombs went off, and a third was reportedly defused by Syrian forces.

Some unconfirmed reports indicate that the 14 casualties were all officers in the Iranian army.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, though early Syrian reports after the incident indicated that the Syrian army believed that the Islamic Sate was behind the attack, meant to serve as a blow to Assad’s regime and to hinder the ongoing process of rehabilitating Syria and its security forces that were mostly destroyed during the decade-long civil war.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday saying that the bombing “comes in the framework of the continued attempts by terrorist organizations and their sponsors to raise their morale.”

“The timing of this terrorist attack shows again the real agendas of its sponsors who seek to target Syria, its people and capabilities,” the Foreign Ministry claimed, adding that “the coincidence of this heinous act with other terrorist attacks to destabilize the regional states in service of the Israeli entity and terrorism clearly affirms the use of terrorism as a criminal political weapon to realize low intervention purposes in the domestic affairs of Syria.”

The statement may be referencing unconfirmed reports of Israeli snipers being behind the assassination of a Syrian official within Syrian territory last week. Madhat al-Saleh, who Israeli officials accused of working for the Iranians to help them set up a terrorist infrastructure under their control close to the Israeli border, was shot near his home in Ein al-Tina on Friday.