At Least 24 Killed in Car Bombing near Damascus

At least 24 civilians, including a large number of children, were killed in two separate car bombings southwest of Damascus on Thursday, state media reported.

Eight people, mostly women and children, were killed by a car bomb in the poor Sunni town of Jdaidet Artuz, state television reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four civilians were killed in the blast.

Less than eight kilometers (five miles) away, a similar blast rocked the town of Qatana earlier in the day, leaving 16 people dead, seven of them children, state news agency SANA reported.

"This morning, terrorists targeted the residential area of Ras al-Nabaa with a vehicle loaded with explosives, blowing it up in front of the Mikhael Samaan school," the agency said. It blamed the attack on "terrorists," the standard regime for rebels.

The Britain-based Observatory said the bomb, outside an army housing complex and near an elementary school, killed 18 people, including two women and seven children.

Another 23 people were wounded, most of them women and children, the news agency quoted a medical source as saying.

In a video posted on a pro-government YouTube channel, crowds of men, women and children were seen stood around in shock at the widespread destruction.

Schoolbags and exercise books were seen strewn across the pavement among pools of blood and piles of rubble in the footage, which could not be independently verified.

Qatana is a working class town 21 kilometers (13 miles) outside Damascus. It has a Sunni Muslim majority and a Christian minority, and is under army control.