A suicide car bombing in Syria's central Hama province has left at least 30 people dead and scores injured, media reports citing activists and rights agencies said late on Monday.
State news agency SANA reported that a "suicide terrorist" detonated his explosive-laden car in the town of Salmiyeh, and that the resultant explosion caused "many martyrs" among residents.
Meanwhile, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based group that monitors and reports casualties in the Syrian conflict, said the suicide bombing targeted the headquarters of a pro-regime militia and added that the victims included at least 25 militiamen.
SOHR, which depends on accounts of activists on the ground in Syria, claims that its reports are impartial and unbiased. Nevertheless, its reports cannot be verified independently as most foreign media are barred from operating in the country.
SOCHR also reported that at least seven people were killed in fighting between government forces and rebels in a Damascus suburb. SANA later confirmed that the fighting took place in the Douma district and added that several "terrorists" were killed by the security forces.
Syria has been witnessing fierce fighting between government forces and armed rebels opposed to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since March 2011. More than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, are believed to have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced so far in the revolt.
The Syrian regime has been consistently using heavy weaponry as well as helicopter-gunships and fighter jets in the conflict, particularly in capital Damascus and the country's second largest city of Aleppo. The armed opposition groups also seem to have procured advanced weapons, which are being currently used against Syrian security forces.
In addition to those trapped inside Syria, the conflict has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. The conflict, which is threatening to spill over to neighboring nations and increasingly becoming sectarian in nature, is now viewed as a civil war by most of the international community.
Russia, a staunch ally of the Syrian President, said on Monday that it had sent two planes to Lebanese capital Beirut to fly home more than 100 Russian nationals who have fled the Syrian conflict. The airlift, the first since the uprising began, apparently reflects the weakening influence of the Assad regime in the unrest-hit Middle east nation.
Notably, continued international efforts to find a solution to the crisis have been hampered by a deep divide in the U.N. Security Council, with Russia and China backing the Assad regime and the West opposing it. While the United States and its allies do not want President Assad to be part of any future government in Syria, Russia insists that it should be left to the Syrian people to decide. Moscow does not want Assad's ouster to be a pre-condition for any political settlement to the crisis.
Although U.N.-Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi had held talks with senior U.S. and Russian diplomats in Geneva earlier this month in an effort to bridge differences between the two super powers on Syria, the negotiations ended without any breakthrough. After the talks, Brahimi said: "If you are asking whether there is a solution around the corner, I'm not sure that is the case."
In the wake of the recent developments, Arab League chief Nabil al-Araby admitted that continued U.N. efforts to resolve the ongoing crisis in Syria appeared to be failing. He told an Arab economic summit in Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday that Brahimi's efforts "have so far not yielded a flicker of hope to put this crisis on the exit track."
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April 24, 2026 15:15 ET Economics news flow was relatively light this week even as the conflict in the Middle East continued, raising concerns for policymakers. In the U.S., spending data, initial jobless claims and pending home sales were the highlights. Business confidence in the biggest euro area economy was in focus in Europe. Inflation data from Japan gained attention in Asia.