Syria's Assad makes rare public appearance

AMMAN, Jordan -- Syrian President Bashar Assad made a rare public appearance at a Damascus power station on Wednesday, while two bombs exploded near the city center, killing one and wounding more than two dozen people, Syria's state news agency reported.

Footage of the visit broadcast on state television showed Assad chatting casually with a group of employees, two days after his prime minister narrowly escaped assassination by an explosion and a day after another major bombing in the capital took at least 14 lives.

SANA said a 10-year-old boy was killed and 28 people wounded, some seriously, in yesterday's attack, when bombs went off in Khaled Bin Walid street and the nearby Bab Mesalla square. It said the bombs were planted by "terrorists," a term the government uses to describe rebels fighting to topple the Syrian leader.

Assad's visit to the Omayyad Electrical Station in the Tishrin Park district came on International Workers Day, or May Day. "They want to scare us, we will not be scared. . . . They want us to live underground, we will not live underground," Assad told a group of workers.