Car bomb near Syrian school kills 20

A car bomb detonated near a Syrian school in the Hama province on Thursday, killing twenty people.

State news agency SANA said the bomb-laden car was detonated outside of the town of Salmiyeh, near a school in al-Kafat. The blast killed mostly women and children and injured 30 others. Some of the injured were taken to Salamiyeh hospital.

British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition watch-dog organization, expected the death toll to rise.

No one claimed responsibility for Thursday's car bombing in the Ismail majority-neighborhood. Ismail is associated with Shiite Islam and Syrian President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect.

Syria has been in the throes of a civil war which has claimed at least 100,000 lives in the past 34 months.

[SANA] [Los Angeles Times]