Suicide car bomb kills 16 Syrian soldiers
A suicide car bombing in Damascus and fighting that followed killed 16 Syrian soldiers Saturday.
DAMASCUS (AFP) - A suicide car bombing outside a pro-regime suburb of Damascus and fighting that followed killed 16 Syrian soldiers Saturday, as the UN-Arab League envoy began a push for peace talks.
Meanwhile, the United States said children were starving to death in besieged residential areas of the capital and demanded the regime allow aid convoys in.
State media blamed the early-morning blast at the entrance to the mixed Christian-Druze suburb of Jaramana on "terrorists," the regime term for rebels.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a suicide bomber from the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front detonated an explosives-packed car at the checkpoint between Jaramana and rebel-held Mleha.
Heavy fighting followed, with rebel mortar fire hitting Jaramana, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on activists and medics on the ground.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said the southeastern suburb is a key pro-regime area and will be exposed if the rebels overrun the checkpoint.
He said they had almost seized it in he fighting, but that government aircraft had launched four strikes to try to force them back.
One resident said the intensity of fighting was "unprecedented" since the conflict erupted in March 2011.
"It is very violent; we can hear automatic weapons fire, mortar rounds, bombardments," he told AFP by telephone.
The conflict, which erupted after President Bashar al-Assad launched a bloody crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests, is believed to have killed more than 115,000 people.
Millions more have been forced to flee the country and hundreds of thousands are trapped by the fighting.
Washington condemned the regime s relentless siege of rebel-held Eastern Ghouta and Moadamiyet al-Sham on the capital s outskirts.
There were "unprecedented reports of children dying of malnutrition-related causes in areas that are only a few miles from Bashar al-Assad s palace in Damascus," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
"The regime s deliberate prevention of the delivery of lifesaving humanitarian supplies to thousands of civilians is unconscionable," she said. "We call on the Syrian regime to immediately approve relief convoys into these areas."
The call came as UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was to arrive in Cairo at the start of a regional tour aimed at paving the way for peace talks.
