Blast hits bus transporting police in Syria

roadside bomb targeting a bus transporting Syrian police in the country’s south on Monday wounded 15 of the officers, the Interior Ministry said.

The ministry said in a terse statement that the officers were returning to Damascus from the southern province of Daraa.

The bomb exploded on the north-south highway near the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh.

It said seven officers were seriously wounded.

Such attacks are not uncommon in Syria, where a nearly 12-year-old conflict has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

In October, a bus bombing killed 18 Syrian soldiers in a Damascus suburb and wounded at least 27 others.

Similar attacks over the years have killed and wounded dozens of soldiers in government-held parts of the war-torn country.

In March last year, militants attacked a military bus near the historic town of Palmyra in central Syria, killing 13 troops and wounding 18 others.