Car bomb kills 20

A car bomb outside a mosque near Damascus killed at least 20 people on Friday as a top UN official expressed mounting concern over hundreds of thousands of trapped civilians. Dozens of people were wounded in the explosion in the town of Suq Wadi Barada, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and other witnesses.
The town is under rebel control, but troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were positioned just outside it, it said. Anti-regime activists blamed the attack on government forces, while state news agency SANA said "the car exploded while the terrorists were packing it with explosives." The Observatory said at least three of the dead were children, and SANA said a seven-year-old child was killed.