A car bombing outside police headquarters killed 13, including 10 police officers and a child, in a town 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Damascus.
The attack, which occurred overnight, took place in the town of Deir Atiyeh, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The information was confirmed by Syria’s state news agency, which blamed “terrorists” for the attack – the government’s term for rebel fighters.
No group has yet taken responsibility for the bombing, which was typical of the radical Islamist rebel groups that are linked to the international Al Qaeda terrorist organization.
The jihadist group that split off from the opposition forces fighting to depose President Bashar al-Assad often employs car bombs to target security installations, government institutions and soldiers.
Last month, the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Nusra Front) claimed responsibility for a string of attacks that claimed at least five lives and blew up security compounds inside the capital.
More than 100,000 people have died in the savage civil war that began in March 2011 with an angry teenager's scrawl on a wall in Dera'a, inspired at the time by the region-wide Arab Spring uprisings.