2 killed, 13 wounded in bus blast near Syrian capital: state media

At least two people were killed and 13 wounded after a bomb planted on a minibus exploded on Thursday in a Syrian town home to Druze and Christian communities near capital Damascus, state media reported, citing the health ministry.

At the blast site in the town of Jaramana, a suburb of Damascus, a minibus had its roof blown out, with the chassis wrecked from the inside and debris strewn across the road, AFP images showed.

"According to preliminary information... the explosion in the town of Jaramana was caused by a bomb placed" inside a minibus, state TV reported, citing an official source.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

Since the toppling of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Syria's new Islamist authorities have sought to exercise full control and restore security.

But the Syrian capital and its suburbs have been the site of multiple attacks and incidents targeting civilians and security forces since they took over.

An AFP photographer saw several ambulances heading to the scene, where a main thoroughfare had been closed to traffic.

The health ministry earlier said that "human remains were being identified and processed by forensic medical teams", state news agency SANA reported.

The town of Jaramana was affected by sectarian violence in the spring of 2025.

Recent attacks include one person killed and 36 others wounded in the explosion of two homemade bombs during French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Damascus last month.

Syrian officials said they had captured an Islamic State-linked cell responsible for the blasts.

Macron, who became the first head of state from the European Union to visit Syria since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024, was not present at his nearby hotel at the time.

A few days earlier, a bombing at a cafe in the capital's centre killed 10 people and wounded around 20.

President Ahmed al-Sharaa has pledged to protect minorities in the multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic country.

But last year saw massacres of Syrian Alawites in the community's coastal heartland and sectarian bloodshed involving the Druze minority in the south.

The deadliest came in June 2025, when an attack on a Damascus church killed 25 people.

The suicide attack was later claimed by a Sunni Islamist group, while the authorities blamed it on the Islamic State group.

In a speech in December marking a year since the fall of Assad, al-Sharaa emphasised the importance of all Syrians unifying efforts to "to build a strong Syria".

Syria last year joined the US-led coalition against IS, a jihadist group that was largely wiped out in Iraq and Syria by 2019.

However the group retains sleeper cells and has called for attacks against authorities.