Seven officers were seriously wounded BEIRUT: A roadside bomb targeting a bus transporting Syrian police in the country’s south on Monday wounded 15 of the officers, the Interior Ministry said. The ministry said in a terse statement that the officers were returning to Damascus from the southern province of Daraa. The bomb exploded on the north-south highway near the town of Khirbet Ghazaleh. It said seven officers were seriously wounded. Such attacks are not uncommon in Syria, where a nearly 12-year-old conflict has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. In October, a bus bombing killed 18 Syrian soldiers in a Damascus suburb and wounded at least 27 others. Similar attacks over the years have killed and wounded dozens of soldiers in government-held parts of the war-torn country. In March last year, militants attacked a military bus near the historic town of Palmyra in central Syria, killing 13 troops and wounding 18 others.