[4][5] The blast occurred roughly 100 metres from a security installation on the road to Damascus International Airport at an intersection leading to the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque, popular with Shia pilgrims from Iran and Lebanon.

The second occurred only a month before the car bombing in Damascus, when General Mohammed Suleiman, a high-ranking aide to President Bashar al-Assad[13] was killed in Tartous.

According to their report, the attacker belonged to a Muslim extremist group and that the car crossed into Syria from a neighbouring Arab country.

The party reported on their website that most of those killed in the bombing were intelligence officials, contrary to government claims that all of the casualties were civilian.

[20] Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majeed condemned the car bombing as a "cowardly terrorist act.

"[2] Foreign secretary David Miliband of the United Kingdom said, "Such acts of terrorism can have no justification, and must be condemned without reservation.