Syria's state television says a booby trapped car has exploded in a neighborhood of the capital, Damascus, killing one person.
The report said Thursday's explosion went off outside the offices of the Red Crescent society.
It's the latest in a series of bombings that have hit Damascus in recent weeks amid fierce fighting in the capital's suburbs between President Bashar Assad's forces and rebels seeking to topple him.
Activists say the car bomb exploded in the al-Zahera district on the southern edge of Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the explosion was followed by a heavy deployment of security troops in the area.
This as fear of Syrian regime possibly using chemical weapons increased as CNN reported that according to US officials, “the Syrian Army has equipped bombs with Sarin gas war heads in preparation for President Bashar Assad’s orders to use them.”
CNN added that "Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese and Turkish Intelligences are cooperating with US apparatuses to determine the measures that must be taken regarding this issue."
Meanwhile, Syria sharply criticized NATO's move to deploy Patriot missiles along its border with Turkey, calling the decision "provocative," as the West took a major step toward a possible military role in the civil war.
After getting Cabinet approval, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters that two German Patriot batteries with a total of 400 soldiers would be sent to the border area under NATO command for one year, although the deployment could be shortened.
Positions:
Russia and the United States will seek a "creative" solution to the Syrian crisis, the international Syria mediator said on Thursday after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
"We haven't taken any sensational decisions," mediator Lakhdar Brahimi told reporters after the meeting on the sidelines of a conference in Dublin.
"We have agreed that the situation is bad and we have agreed that we must continue to work together to see how we can find creative ways of bringing this problem under control," he added.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
has written to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad urging him not to use chemical
weapons in the country's escalating conflict, the U.N. press office said on
Thursday.
In readout of a telephone call Ban had with
Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,
the UN press office said the UN chief told Uzumcu that "any use of such
weapons would be an outrageous crime with dire consequences."
"The Secretary-General informed
(Uzumcu) that he has written again to President al-Assad urging him to refrain
from the use of any such weapons under any circumstances and underscoring the
fundamental responsibility of the Syrian government to ensure the safety and
security of any such stockpiles," it said.
Syria's deputy foreign minister said on Thursday he feared Western countries were voicing concerns over his country's possible use of chemical weapons to lay the ground for intervention, despite Damascus saying it would not use them.
Faisal Maqdad said media reports citing U.S. and European intelligence officials as saying Syria was preparing its chemical weapons for possible use were "theatre" in an interview with the Lebanese news channel Al Manar.
Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi in Dublin on Thursday afternoon, diplomatic sources in Moscow said.
"They will speak about a plan (or) common understanding on how to move forward," one source said.
Earlier, Germany's cabinet agreed on Thursday to send Patriot missiles and soldiers to Turkey to defend it against a possible Syrian missile attack after NATO agreed to the request from Ankara on Tuesday, a cabinet source told Reuters.
NATO member Turkey has repeatedly scrambled jets along the countries' frontier and has responded in kind when shells from the Syrian conflict came down inside its borders, fueling fears the civil war could spread.
The Netherlands and the United States also plan to provide Patriot missile batteries. Deployment is expected to take several weeks.
Germany needs to get approval from its Bundestag lower house, which is not expected to be a problem although some opposition lawmakers, mainly Greens, are against the deployment due to fears of getting caught up in a wider regional conflict.
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has said he expects a broad parliamentary majority.
AP/LBCI/REUTERS