Rockets hits regime-held Damascus business fair, injuries reported

Rocket fire injured several people on Sunday near the entrance to the Damascus International Fair, a key business gathering being held for the first time in five years.

Syrian state television citing reporters at the scene said the rocket hit near the entrance of the exhibition complex where the business fair opened this week.

"We were preparing to receive visitors when I heard an explosion”, said Iyad Jaber, 39, a Syrian working at a textile stand. He said he then saw smoke at the entrance to the exhibition hall.

The shelling comes three days after the Syrian regime opened the trade fair, once a top event on Syria's economic calendar.

The United States and European countries which imposed sanctions on Assad's regime were not officially invited to participate in the fair, which was first held in 1954.

But a handful of European companies are participating on an individual basis in the event, which opened on Thursday and is scheduled to last 10 days.

Syrian officials had hailed the reopening of the event after five years of war as a "victory" and renewed confidence in the war-torn nation.

Its general director, Fares al-Kartally, said the decision to hold the fair this year was a result of "the return of calm and stability in most regions" of Syria.

"We want this fair to signal the start of (the country's) reconstruction," Kartally told AFP earlier this week.

Damascus has largely been insulated from the worst violence in the country's brutal civil war, but key opposition enclaves remain in Eastern Ghouta outside the city.

The Damascus suburb has been battered by seven years of fighting and is one of the last bastions of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Rebel fighters have regularly fired rockets at the capital, with regime forces carrying out devastating bombing campaigns across Eastern Ghouta.

Despite a 22 July ceasefire deal as part of the so-called "de-escalation zones" agreed in May, Eastern Ghouta has been rocked over past weeks with deadly regime airstrikes.