BREAKING NEWS

Group says Syrian car bomb kills at least 18, wounds dozens

At least 18 people, includingwomen and children, were killed by a car bomb that went off neara school in the village of Al-Kafat in central Syria onThursday, a monitoring group said.

The death toll was likely to rise because some of the dozensof people wounded were in critical condition, the Britain-basedSyrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Al-Kafat, in the central Hama province, is home to membersof Syria's Ismaili Shi'ite Muslim minority. The rebels fightingto overthrow President Bashar Assad, an Alawite, areoverwhelmingly Sunni.