Bombs explode near Damascus Four Seasons during Macron visit

Two improvised explosive devices detonated near Damascus’s Four Seasons Hotel on Tuesday, wounding 18 people, according to Syrian authorities, as French President Emmanuel Macron began a visit and headed to the presidential palace to meet Syria’s interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa. Euronews reports the blasts happened moments before Syrian state television announced Macron’s arrival at the palace, and that the French leader had stayed at the hotel the night before.

Syrian officials said one device was placed in a parked car and another in a garbage container, and that both exploded as preparations were underway to dismantle them. AFP journalists cited by Euronews reported hearing at least one blast and seeing smoke near the hotel; an AFP photographer saw damaged windows. Authorities closed nearby roads and ambulances were sent to the scene, while hotel security moved people who had met Macron earlier that morning into the parking garage as a precaution.

The episode lands on a day meant to signal a new phase in Syria’s external relations. Macron is described as the first Western leader to visit Syria since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024, and the Élysée Palace said the trip continued despite the explosions. But the practical reality of hosting a high-profile delegation in the capital is that security becomes the headline: the bombs were close enough to a landmark hotel that the immediate task was not diplomacy but cordons, evacuations and controlled movement.

It also underlines the limits of central authority in a country still absorbing regime change. Euronews notes the explosions were the second since Thursday, when a bombing in a Damascus cafe killed 10 people. When attacks recur in the same city within days, the promise of “stability” becomes a matter of who can prevent violence in ordinary public spaces, not who can stage a meeting at a palace.

For European governments exploring re-engagement, the costs are not abstract. Every visit requires significant security planning, and Macron reportedly delayed announcing the date of his trip until his plane landed, a detail that hints at the operational constraints around even symbolic outreach. The more Western diplomacy depends on tightly managed movements and last-minute secrecy, the less it resembles a normal bilateral relationship and the more it resembles an escorted operation inside an insecure state.

Macron had already left the hotel before the blasts and the French presidential convoy did not hear them, according to two AFP journalists traveling with the delegation. Syrian authorities said four police officers were among the injured, and the visit proceeded anyway.