Two bomb attacks occurred Tuesday morning near the hotel where French President Emmanuel Macron spent the night in central Damascus, injuring 18 people according to Syrian authorities.
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The Élysée assured that the head of state was continuing his visit to Syria normally.
He had left the Four Seasons Hotel when the two explosions occurred. And was at the presidential palace in the middle of the day for an extended meeting of the French and Syrian leaders with their delegation, which was to be followed by a tête-à-tête with Ahmad al-Chareh, according to the French presidency.
One of the “homemade” bombs was placed in a garbage dumpster and the other in a vehicle parked on the side of the road, said the Interior Ministry, reporting 18 injured, including four police officers.
“I saw three injured members of the security forces lying on the ground,” Houmam Hammoud, a currency trader who witnessed the scene, told AFP.
According to an Interior Ministry source, cited by the official Sana agency, security forces discovered the bombs which exploded when they were trying to dismantle them.
The explosions were not heard from the presidential procession, according to two AFP journalists who were part of it.
Other AFP journalists saw traces of blood on the sidewalk and metal fragments near the hotel. Opposite, windows of the Ministry of Tourism were broken by the explosions.
Security forces were deployed in force at the scene and barred access to the press while ambulances headed to the scene.
The French president met earlier in the morning with representatives of civil society in this hotel.
The latter were taken by hotel security to the garage as a precaution after the two explosions, one of the participants told AFP.
Emmanuel Macron arrived in Syria on Monday evening, the first visit by a leader of a Western power to the country since an Islamist coalition came to power.
On Monday evening, he had dinner with the Syrian president in a restaurant in central Damascus before going with him to the famous Umayyad mosque in the heart of the city.
His visit came as ten people were killed Thursday in a bomb attack on a cafe in central Damascus.
