Syrian state TV and residents say a massive explosion rocked a Damascus neighborhood that houses several embassies and a military airport late Sunday.
The opposition Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a car bomb was detonated at a checkpoint near the military airport in the western neighborhood of Mezzeh.
The Observatory said there were reports of casualties, but there was no immediate figure available.
The media office of the Free Syrian Army’s military council in the Damascus area also said the explosion targeted the military airport in the neighborhood.
Ambulances were seen heading to the military airport compound, a major base for President Bashar Assad’s elite forces, activists said.
Video footage taken by activists showed flames rising from the area, visible from a distance.
“It was so big. There was a white light followed by a sound like thunder,” a resident told The Daily Star of the blast kilometers away.
