BEIRUT — A car bomb in the parking lot of a Syrian military compound killed at least nine people Saturday, the latest in increasingly frequent bombings in the country’s major cities to target the regime’s security services.
President Barack Obama said the members of the Group of Eight industrial nations support the U.N.’s peace plan for Syria, but he added that it had not taken hold fast enough.
In Damascus, top United Nations peacekeeping and military officials met with Syrian officials to try to salvage that peace plan, which has been marred by daily violence and dismissed by the opposition as unrealistic. A cease-fire that was supposed to start last month has never taken hold, undermining the rest of international envoy Kofi Annan’s plan, which is supposed to lead to talks to end the 14-month crisis.
The suicide bombing Saturday struck the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, blowing holes in the walls of nearby buildings.
Syrian state TV said a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle carrying 2,200 pounds of explosives and that the blast left a crater 15 feet wide and more than 6 feet deep.
The state-run SANA news agency said the blast hit the parking lot of a military residential compound. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said the bomb went off close to branches of the Military Intelligence Directorate and Air Force Intelligence.
Syria’s state news agency posted photos of U.N. observers — some of about 260 in Syria as part of Annan’s plan — visiting the blast site.
Attacks such as the one in Deir al-Zour, which once served as a transit hub for militants heading to fight U.S. forces in Iraq, have raised fears that militant Islamists are taking advantage of the chaos to carry out al-Qaeda-style attacks. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
