[An Nahar] A suicide kaboom in a Christian area in the heart of the Syrian capital on Thursday killed at least four people, state television... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
said.
"A terrorist suicide kaboom... in Damascus has left four people dead and several others maimed," the broadcaster said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the toll, adding that the likely target of the bombing was a Shiite Mohammedan charity located in the Christian neighborhood.
"According to preliminary reports, four people were killed and several others maimed," said the Britannia-based Observatory.
"The bombing took place close to the Ihsan charity, which is Shiite," watchdog director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"I believe the charity was the actual target."
Though it began with peaceful protests calling for the fall of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
's regime, Syria's war has grown increasingly sectarian over time.
The majority of Syria's rebels -- like the population -- are Sunni Mohammedan, while Assad belongs to the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Sectarian tensions have grown further in recent months, ever since the entry into Syria's conflict of Leb's Hizbullah.
Residents of the neighborhood told AFP the police blocked off the road linking the two historical neighborhoods of Bab Tuma and Bab Sharqi, where the bombing took place.
An AFP journalist saw a corpse stretched out on the pavement.
At least two shops were damaged by the blast, said the correspondent, adding that firefighters, security forces and soldiers were all deployed in the area.
Official television channel Al-Ikhbariya broadcast footage of the body of a man in a white T-shirt, saying it was the remains of the jacket wallah.
It also showed body parts strewn across the area.