BEIRUT: A car bomb blast killed eight people, including a child and two women, near the Syrian capital on Saturday in what was once a regime stronghold, a monitoring group said.

“Eight civilians, including a young girl and two women, were killed and 13 others critically injured by a car bomb blast in Al-Nabak on the road linking Damascus to Homs,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The blast targeted participants in an anti-regime demonstration,”Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. Amateur video posted on YouTube by activists and distributed by the Observatory showed a badly damaged white vehicle, with its side door charred and the back blasted away.

It was not clear who was behind the attack, Abdel Rahman said.