A car bomb has killed 20 people in Damascus and wounded dozens more, the Syrian foreign ministry says, the first such bombing in the Syrian capital since a series of jihadist suicide attacks in March.
The authorities said it was one of three car bombs that were meant to be blown up in crowded areas of the capital on Sunday, the first day back to work from the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Security forces pursued and destroyed the other two.
Officials said the bombers had been prevented from reaching their intended targets, otherwise the casualty toll would have been higher.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Damascus was hit by two separate, multiple suicide bomb attacks in March, one of them claimed by Islamic State and the other by the Islamist insurgent alliance Tahrir al-Sham.
In a letter to the UN secretary general and the head of the security council, the foreign ministry said the blast that killed 20 people in the Bab Touma area near the Old City had also wounded dozens of women and children.
State media said the bomber had been spotted and pursued by the security forces and set off the bomb after he had been encircled in the area.
Damascus has enjoyed relative security in recent years even as the six-year-long civil war has raged on in nearby areas.
Footage broadcast by state TV from the blast that caused the fatalities near the Old City showed roads scattered with debris, several badly damaged cars, and another one that had been turned into a pile of twisted metal.
Footage from another of the blast sites showed what appeared to be the remains of a person and badly damaged vehicles outside a mosque in the Baytara traffic circle near the Old City.
