At least 15 people have been killed and 50 others injured in a car bombing at an army checkpoint in a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.
Monday's explosion struck the town of al-Diyabiyah, which serves as one of the gateways for the many foreign pilgrims who visit Sayeda Zainab shrine, a Shia holy site located south of Damascus.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
One of the guards manning the checkpoint told AFP news agency that his bomb detector began beeping when a suspicious truck pulled up.
"We stopped the car at the checkpoint and when we began a manual search, they detonated the bomb," he said.
"My colleagues were killed."
Windows of a small hotel across the checkpoint were shattered by the force of the blast.
The hotel is occupied mostly by displaced Syrians from Fouaa and Kefraya, two Shia-majority towns in the northwest that are under siege by armed rebels.
The holy site, believed to contains the grave of Zeinab, a venerated granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad, is heavily guarded by the government forces.
The area around the shrine has been hit by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group several times this year.
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