Syria's prime minister, Wael al-Halki, survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Damascus on Monday, underscoring the potency of the rebels in Damascus in their hopes of toppling Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reported. Six people were killed in the blast, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the bombing, which he described as a "terrorist attack." The suicide bombing highlighted the rebels' growing ability to target symbols of Assad's authority in a civil war that has cost more than 70,000 lives, according to the U.N..
Assad picked Halki in August to replace Riyadh Hijab, who defected and escaped to neighboring Jordan just weeks after a bombing killed four of the president's top security advisers.
"Dr. Wael al-Halki is well and not hurt at all," state television claimed in its report.
It later broadcast footage of Halki at an economic committee meeting. He condemned the attack as a sign of "bankruptcy and failure of the terrorist groups."
The United States is trying to determine the facts around alleged Syrian use of chemical weapons. Last week U.S. officials said they had "varying degrees of confidence" that such weapons were used in Syria, which if proven with certainty could trigger unspecified U.S. action against the Syrian government, as many human rights groups have chided the Obama administration's mostly hands-off approach to the crisis.
Despite congressional pressure to do more to help the rebels, the U.S. president has made clear he is in no rush to intervene on the basis of preliminary evidence.
As many as five million people have reportedly fled their homes, including 1.4 million refugees in nearby countries, according to news reports and the Beirut-based U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia estimated that "400,000 houses were completely destroyed, 300,000 partially destroyed and a further half million have suffered some kind of structural damage," according to findings.
