Four people were killed in an explosion in President Assad's town of Qardaha on Saturday, a monitoring group said.
Agencies reported that the explosion was the first to hit the middle of the town since violence erupted in 2011. The blast hit an area near a hospital, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The British-based monitoring group said that the origin of the explosion was unknown and that it was unclear whether the explosion had been caused by a car bomb or by rocket fire.
The explosion "killed four people - a nurse, a hospital employee and two soldiers," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman added.
The town of Qardaha is home to a mausoleum containing the graves of President Bashar Assad's father and former president, Hafez.
