At least 45 people were killed and 110 injured on Sunday in a car bomb and two suicide blasts near a Shia shrine in the Sayeda Zeinab district of Damascus, reported Reuters. Syrian state news agency SANA said a group of militants detonated a car bomb near a garage in the district's Koua Sudan area, after which two suicide bombers blew themselves up while people were being rescued.

The explosions occurred as representatives of Syria's government and its divided opposition began gathering in Geneva for the first United Nations-mediated peace talks in two years. The heavily populated area in the south of the city is visited by pilgrims from Iran, Lebanon and other parts of the Muslim world. The Sayeda Zeinab shrine area witnessed heavy clashes in the first few years of the conflict, which began in 2011, but has since been secured by the Syrian army and Shia militias led by Hezbollah, which has set up protective roadblocks around it.