BEIRUT — A car bomb in the parking lot of a Syrian military compound killed at least nine people Saturday, the latest in increasingly frequent bombings in the country's major cities to target the regime's security services.
President Barack Obama said the members of the Group of Eight industrial nations support the U.N.'s peace plan for Syria, but added that it had not taken hold fast enough.
In Damascus, top United Nations' peacekeeping and military officials met with Syrian officials to try to salvage that peace plan, which has been marred by daily violence and dismissed by the opposition as unrealistic. A cease-fire that was supposed to start last month has never really taken hold, undermining the rest of international envoy Kofi Annan's plan, which is supposed to lead to talks to end the 14-month crisis.
Saturday's suicide bombing struck the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, blowing holes in the walls of nearby buildings and sending up a plume of smoke that stretched across the horizon.
Video broadcast on Syrian state TV showed damaged buildings, smoldering cars and trucks flipped upside down. Debris filled a street that was stained with blood. The station said a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle carrying 2,200 pounds of explosives and that the blast left a crater 15 feet wide and more than 6 feet deep.