A large car bomb exploded on Friday near a children's playground in southern Damascus and initial reports indicated a large number of casualties, opposition activists in the capital said.
According to preliminary figures, five people were killed and 32 were wounded in the blast, state television said.
The bomb went off in the southern Daf al-Shok area, a Sunni neighborhood. Several buildings were damaged, they said.
Syria's army command said on
Friday it had responded to several attacks by rebel forces on military
positions across the country, which it said violated a ceasefire marking the
Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
It said it had responded to the rebel
attacks in accordance with its announcement on Thursday that it would cease
military activity during the four-day holiday but reserve the right to react to
rebel action.
Earlier in the day, three people were killed by tank fire and snipers in the Damascus suburb of Harasta on Friday, activists said, in another violation of a ceasefire intended to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Rebels in a northern town close to the Turkish border also reported one of their fighters was shot dead by a sniper early on Friday and a Reuters journalist in the town heard what sounded like four rounds of tank fire.
Earlier, heavy fighting broke out around a Syrian military base, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, in the first major violation of a ceasefire marking the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
The Observatory said rebel fighters were trying to storm the base, which is less than 1 km (half a mile) from the main north-south highway linking Damascus to Aleppo, and President Bashar al-Assad's forces had fired artillery at a nearby village.
In the early morning, Syria TV broadcasted on Friday a video showing the Syrian President
Bashar Assad performing the Eid Al-Adha prayers in one of Damascus'
mosques.
Assad sat in the front line, seemed relaxed and was constantly
smiling while talking to the worshipers who were sitting beside him.
Meanwhile, calm reigned in various Syrian cities after the Eid truce between the regime and the rebels was declared.
In this context, citizens organized demonstrations in several Syrian
cities after performing the Eid prayers, raising the Free Syrian Army
flags and chanting anti-regime slogans.
International Positions:
Saudi Arabia said on Thursday it had expelled three people working at
Syria's consulate in Jeddah, a new sign of ill feeling between the
countries as Riyadh backs rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's
government in Damascus.
Also in Saudi Arabia, the imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque called on Arabs and Muslims on Friday to take "practical and urgent" steps to stop bloodshed in Syria that has killed some 30,000 people, and urged world states to assume their moral responsibility towards the conflict. Saudi Arabia has led Arab efforts to isolate Assad's government, and has supported the rebels with money and logistics.
For his part, the Prime Minister of Hamas' cabinet Ismail Haniyeh
called on the "despotic" Syrian regime to lift its grip off the
Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and the Syrian people.
On the other hand, after
Saudi Arabia has announced the expulsion of three Syrian diplomats, the kingdom's
foreign ministry clarified that this decision came after the work of those
diplomats was said to be incompatible with their duties.
To watch the VIDEO, click on the image above.
LBCI/REUTERS