By Jana Choukeir<\/p>\n
BEIRUT, July 2 (Reuters) – A bomb blast at a cafe in central Damascus on Thursday killed nine people and wounded 20 others, Syria’s interior \u200cministry said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.<\/p>\n
Syrian state television said an \u200cexplosive device had been planted at the cafe, near the Palace of Justice in the centre of the capital.<\/p>\n
The \u200binterior ministry said preliminary investigations showed the blast was caused by a crudely made explosive device weighing about one kilogram and packed with metal shrapnel, causing severe injuries and extensive damage at the site.<\/p>\n
Videos that circulated on social media showed wounded people and blood on the floors \u200cof a cafe, purportedly the site \u2060of the blast. Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.<\/p>\n
The attack presents another security challenge to the Syrian government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, \u2060who took control after overthrowing former President Bashar al-Assad in late 2024. Assad’s ouster effectively ended more than 14 years of civil war.<\/p>\n
Damascus has witnessed a handful of security incidents since then, including \u200ba car \u200bbomb that killed one Syrian soldier and wounded \u200bat least 18 people outside the \u200cdefence ministry in May.<\/p>\n
Although no group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s blast, Islamic State has sought to exploit the security vacuum created by Assad’s ouster by reactivating sleeper cells, recruiting fighters and moving weapons as the new government extends its authority across the country, security officials had said.<\/p>\n
The militant group announced earlier this year what it described as a new phase of \u200coperations against Sharaa’s government.<\/p>\n
The group is far weaker than \u200bwhen it controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq \u200bbefore the collapse of its self-declared \u200bcaliphate in 2019. It remains capable of carrying out deadly insurgency-style attacks \u200cand is viewed by Syrian, Iraqi and \u200bWestern officials as one \u200bof the biggest threats to Syria’s transition.<\/p>\n
Sharaa’s other opponents include Assad-era officers and soldiers. In 2025, Syria was rocked by fighting between the new government forces and \u200binsurgents from Syria’s Alawite minority, \u200cand separately between government forces and Druze gunmen.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir; Additional Reporting by \u200bEnas Alashray and Eman Abouhassira; Writing by John Davison, Editing by Timothy \u200bHeritage, Gareth Jones, Aidan Lewis and David Gregorio)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jana Choukeir BEIRUT, July 2 (Reuters) – A bomb blast at a cafe in central Damascus on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[670,2327,21860,3539,95,56244],"class_list":["post-188171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-damascus","tag-defence-ministry","tag-explosive-device","tag-interior-ministry","tag-syria","tag-syrian-state-television"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116852667484635138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}