Journalist among three dead in Syria roadside bombing, says state media

By AFP 9 August 2023, 3:14 pm

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Illutrative: Smoke rises above a rebel-held town east of the city of Daraa during airstrikes by Syrian regime forces on June 30, 2018. (Mohamad ABAZEED/AFP)

A Syrian television journalist and two soldiers are killed when a roadside bomb explodes in the southern province of Daraa, state media reports.

“Correspondent Firas al-Ahmad from [privately owned] Sama TV and two members of our armed forces were killed by an explosive device” as they returned from a counternarcotics operation in the province, state television says. “Terrorists” had planted the bomb, it adds.

Daraa was the cradle of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad’s rule but it returned to Damascus’s control in 2018 under a ceasefire deal backed by Russia. The province has been wracked by violence for years.