Syria talks inch ahead as fighting continues

Nearly immediately afterward, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a group of militiamen standing near the checkpoint, the same sources said.

State news agency SANA said the first blast was caused by a vehicle bomb that detonated at a bus station near the shrine.

The shrine contains the grave of one of Prophet Muhammad’s grand-daughters, and many Shiite pilgrims continue to visit the site despite the ongoing war, the BBC reported.

The talks got off to a rocky start Friday when United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura met only with a Syrian government delegation.

The explosions occurred as representatives of Syria’s government and its divided opposition began convening in Geneva for the first U.N.-mediated peace talks in two years.

Cavusoglu has said the Syrian Kurdish forces’ participation in U.N-led peace talks for Syria in Geneva would be “dangerous” and lead to the end of the U.N.-led initiative.

The civil war in Syria has dragged on for almost five years killed a quarter of a million people and displaced millions more.

Assad’s government has long referred to all those fighting to overthrow him as terrorists, but has agreed to negotiations with some armed groups in the latest talks.

But the Syrian government and its close ally Russian Federation view both as terrorist groups that should be excluded from the process, along with the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s local affiliate.

The delegation has named Army of Islam official Mohammed Alloush as its chief negotiator.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attacks in the Sayeda Zeinab district of Damascus, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports the militant group. But in Geneva, opposition delegates were compiling a list of 3,800 prisoners for possible discussions about an exchange and proposing to their rebel allies that they unilaterally lift a siege on two government-held towns.