Several people are feared dead after an explosion on a bus near Damascus.
The Syrian ambulance service said two people had been killed and 13 injured, in an initial toll after human remains were found at the scene of the blast.
Syrian state-owned television broadcast footage of the badly damaged vehicle in Jaramana, a suburb of Damascus.
Hospitals were placed on high alert while forensic workers examined the bodies. Official media said an explosive device had detonated inside the bus.
A lawyer with an office in Rawda, a district in the middle of Jaramana, described the vehicle as a taxi van that passes through several neighbourhoods to pick up passengers. He was 200 metres from the site of the explosion and rushed there after the blast, which occurred around 7.30pm local time.
The vehicle “was mangled and there were wounded people laying around it,” he told The National. He said the wounded were rushed to two hospitals in Jaramana, as well to two other hospitals in central Damascus.
“I didn’t count but there must have been two dozen casualties,” he said. A crane was being used to move the bus.
Jaramana is home to many people from Syria's Druze minority. It was the scene of clashes last year between Druze fighters and militias loyal to the Syrian government.
The Druze in Jaramana have been cut off from Sweida, the sect’s heartland in southern Syria, since an offensive by government forces on Sweida last year.
