Suicide bomb at Damascus office kills four-state media

A suicide bomb attack at a Syrian defence ministry office in central Damascus killed at least four people on Tuesday, state media and a monitoring group said.

The bomber detonated himself using an explosive belt at the office in the Jisr al-Abyad area in the capital's centre, news agency SANA reported.

At least four people were killed and 17 wounded in the attack, state television said. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the office was used by relatives of deceased soldiers for paperwork and was not a military site.

More than 100,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which started in March 2011 as a peaceful protest movement and descended into civil war after a government crackdown.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have stayed in control of central Damascus and most of Syria's major cities and towns, although rebels have managed to carry out bomb and rocket attacks in the capital's heart.

(Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; editing by Ralph Boulton)