04-05-2015: 'A high-ranking Assad regime general was reportedly injured in a brazen suicide attack Monday morning in the center of the Syrian capital.

“A major-general in charge of the regime force’s Logistics and Supplies Administration was injured... by a blast that targeted him and his colleagues in the Rokken Eddine area of central Damascus,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Monday.

The monitoring group added that one of the general’s colleagues was killed in attack, while two others were injured.

Pro and anti-Damascus outlets reported on the attack, identifying the general as Mohammad Eid, with Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television claiming that the bid to assassinate him had failed after a suicide bomber driving a scooter detonated himself in the area.

Syria’s SANA news agency, in turn, said that security forces had “eliminated a terror group in its entirety during a pursuit in eastern Rokken Eddine.”

“One of the terror group members blew himself up,” the terse report added, without making any mention of Eid being wounded in the incident.

The Observatory reported earlier in the morning that two blasts had rocked Rokken Eddine, leading to injuries.

“Following the explosions gunfire was heard in the neighborhood,” the monitoring group added.

The pro-opposition El Dorar news said that the two blasts occurred near the Logistics and Supplies Administration HQ in the area, after which the injured general was rushed to the capital’s Teshreen Military Hospital.

“Assad’s forces closed the roads and streets around Roken Eddine […] after the bombings,” sources told the outlet.

“At the same time houses were surrounded, ambulances poured into the neighborhood and gunfire was used to clear the roads.”

A similar attack rocked Damascus in early March, when Ahrar al-Sham released a video claiming to show the assassination of Ali Darwish, who the group identified as a “staff general,” without elaborating further.

The 54-second video, which appears to have been filmed with a camera phone, shows three men approaching an SUV, which explodes directly after they enter it.

The Observatory reported March 2 that a general—without identifying him—and two of his companions were assassinated by an Islamic movement which had placed an IED in his car.'

Report from NOW Media Lebanon: https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/NewsReports/565216-damascus-attack-targets-h...

Photo from Rokn el-Deen showing smoke rising from the bomb blast from Orient News