Explosions rock Damascus as Macron makes landmark visit to Syria
DAMASCUS
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, right, meets French President Emmanuel Macron at the presidential palace in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Two explosions shook Damascus on July 7 near a hotel where French President Emmanuel Macron was staying, wounding at least 18 people, during the French leader’s landmark visit to Syria.
The president was not inside the hotel when the blasts hit, having already left for Syria’s presidential palace, where Marcon held a meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
One bomb was placed inside a car parked on the side of a road, while the second was planted in a garbage container. It said they exploded “while preparations were underway” to dismantle them.
The blasts wounded 18 people, including four police officers, Syrian state media said.
The French president, the first Western European leader to visit Syria since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024, would continue his trip, France’s Elysee Palace said.
Macron and Sharaa visited Damascus’s famous Umayyad Mosque on July 6 after a working dinner.
After the meeting with Sharaa, Macron took part in an “economic forum focusing on Syria’s reconstruction and strategic corridors.”
He was accompanied by several key economic players including Rodolphe Saade, chief executive of maritime transport giant CMA CGM, and TotalEnergies head Patrick Pouyanne.
The head of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanne, visiting Damascus alongside Macron, said that Syria could become an important transit country from Iraq to the Mediterranean sea, offering “alternative routes” to the Strait of Hormuz.
“Today, it’s clear that the security situation still doesn’t allow us to operate, but I think it is a positive initiative to come here, to Damascus,” he told reporters.
“It is a country at the crossroads of the Middle East,” he added on the sidelines of Macron’s visit.
Sharaa also said that he wants France to be a primary partner for Damascus, which he said has regained its role as a transit hub after the Strait of Hormuz closure.
“After the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the world realized the value of safe and stable corridors... here the importance of Syrian geography is highlighted, which today has regained its vital role as an indispensable link in the global corridors market, and we want France to be our primary partner in this path,” Sharaa said in an economic forum with Macron.
The last French president to visit Syria was Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, before Assad brutally crushed pro-democracy protests in 2011, sparking a conflict that killed more than half a million people and devastated
the country’s infrastructure and industry.
In May 2025, Macron hosted Sharaa in France on his first official visit to a European country, a move that preceded the Syrian leader’s trip to Washington last year to meet U.S. President Donald Trump