Car bomb in western Syria kills 34 - state news
BEIRUT (Reuters) - A car bomb in Syria's western Hama province killed 34 and wounded more than 50, Syria's state news agency SANA said on Friday, blaming the attack on rebels fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. It was not immediately clear if the attack was in any way related to the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is very active in Syria and has seized vast tracts of territory across the border in Iraq in recent weeks. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad monitoring group, said 37 were killed and more than 40 wounded in the blast which took place in the village of Hurra. It said that there were overnight clashes between government forces and Islamist fighters in the province, as well as bombings by the Syrian army. SANA described the car bomb as a "terrorist" attack, wording it uses to refer to rebel fighters. Syria's three-year-old conflict began as peaceful protests but has turned into civil war, killing at least 100,000 people according to United Nations. Rebels have been joined by hardline Islamists, some of them linked to al Qaeda, who have become increasingly powerful among opposition forces. (Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Alison Williams)
