IS claims deadly bombings near Damascus shrine

Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide and car bomb blasts that struck a Damascus suburb on Saturday near Syria's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine, and a monitoring group said at least 20 people were killed.

The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for a deadly double bomb attack near a Shi’ite Muslim shrine in a suburb of Syria’s capital of Damascus.

The Syrian state’s SANA news agency said on Saturday that a suicide bomber and a car bomb had struck the entrance to the Sayeda Zeinab district housing the shrine, which is revered by Shias across the world.

State media said at least eight people were killed, but the British-base Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the death toll had risen to at least 20, including 13 civilians. It said that the number was expected to rise because of the scores of wounded people in critical condition.

In an online post, IS said that two of its suicide bombers had blown themselves up and that operatives had detonated an explosives-laden car.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington condemned the attack in the strongest terms. "This terrorist act demonstrates once again the inhumanity and brutality of all that Daesh does and all it stands for," he said.

The ultra-hardline Sunni militants of IS, whose enemies are advancing on a number of fronts in Syria, Iraq and Libya, are avowed enemies of Shi'ites, whom they consider a heretical group within Islam.

The Sayeda Zeinab shrine, about 10km south of the centre of Damscus, contains the grave of Zeinab, a venerated granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad.

Notable for its glistening, golden dome, it is a magnet for thousands of Iraqi and Afghan Shi'ite militia recruits who travel there before being assigned to front lines, to fight against the Sunni rebel groups trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

Almost every Shi'ite militia fighter bears insignia on his combat fatigues with the words "For your sake, Sayeda Zeinab".