Assad says truce reliant on halting aid to rebels

A car bomb killed 13 people in central Damascus yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad told an international mediator seeking a truce in Syria’s civil war that the key to any political solution was to stop arming rebels.

The bomb exploded outside a police station in the mainly Christian central Bab Touma district of the capital while Assad held talks with UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is pushing for a temporary ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

State news agency Sana said the president claimed Syria supported “any sincere effort to find a political solution to the crisis, based on respect for Syrian sovereignty and rejecting foreign intervention”.