BEIRUT, (AFP) – A car bomb killed 16 people, seven of them children, in the town of Qatana, southwest of Damascus, on Thursday, state news agency SANA reported, blaming “terrorists” for the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the bomb, outside an army housing complex and near an elementary school, killed 17 people, including two women as well as the seven children.

“This morning, terrorists targeted the residential area of Ras al-Nabaa with a vehicle loaded with explosives, blowing it up in front of the Mikhael Samaan school,” SANA said.

Another 23 people were wounded in the bombing, most of them women and children, the news agency quoted a medical source as saying.

Qatana is a working class town 21 kilometres (13 miles) outside Damascus. It has a Sunni Muslim majority and a Christian minority and is under full army control.