Syria blast kills 21

A blast ripped through a pickup truck Wednesday in southern Syria, killing 21 people in the latest attack on civilians in the country’s raging war, adding urgency to international efforts to convene peace talks.

Washington pressed the Syrian opposition National Coalition to agree to a peace conference that would bring together dissidents and regime representatives, even as more rebel groups rejected the NC.

A truck was passing through an area of Daraa province in southern Syria where troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are stationed when it was struck by a blast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“Twenty-one people were killed in the Nawa area (of Daraa), among them four children and six women, in a blast that detonated as their vehicle went past Tal al-Jumua,” the Britain-based Observatory said.

Activists accused regime troops of planting the explosives, the watchdog said.

Daraa is the cradle of the uprising that broke out against Assad in March 2011.

The Observatory says more than 115,000 people have been killed in the war that erupted after Assad’s troops unleashed a brutal crackdown against protesters.