Smoke rises after what activists said was a fire near Damascus International Airport October 23, 2013.
As the war of attrition grinds on in Syria, rebel forces appear to have delivered a critical blow to the government’s infrastructure, at least temporarily. According to a report in the BBC, on Wednesday insurgent guerrillas severed a vital gas pipeline with an artillery strike, which triggered power outages in the capital Damascus and across large swaths of the Syrian countryside.
“A terrorist attack on a gas pipeline that feeds a power station in the south has led to a power outage in the provinces, and work to repair it is in progress,” Electricity Minister Imad Khamis told state media outlets, according to the BBC.
As darkness enveloped the capital, a rebel car bomb reportedly detonated near a government checkpoint on the city outskirts resulting in several causalities.
[BBC]