BEIRUT: A blast ripped through a hospital parking lot in President Bashar Assad’s hometown Saturday, killing at least four people, but even regime supporters differed over whether it was the result of a jihadi suicide bomber or a rebel-fired Grad rocket.

The explosion struck the Bassel Assad hospital in the Latakia town of Qardaha and funerals were held Sunday for some of the victims, who included a nurse at the facility and two soldiers, according to the Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Observatory said two men in a vehicle were responsible but a pro-regime Facebook page dedicated to news of Assad’s hometown first reported that it was a rocket. Rebel groups based in mountainous areas of Latakia province have recently stepped up their barrages on areas of Latakia city, located on the coast.

In response, regime aircraft pounded rebel-held areas in Latakia, killing 16 people in two separate strikes, according to the Observatory.

The news later spread that a suicide bomber – and possibly three men in the same car – were responsible for the Qardaha blast, generating questions about how the supposed bombers made their way past multiple regime checkpoints.

The page then changed its version, accepting the suicide attack account. It published details about the car’s forged license plates and said it detonated 100 meters from the hospital’s entrance.

Media reports then said a little-known rebel group, the Gathering to Aid the Oppressed, had sent a young man from Idlib province, Abdel-Mouin al-Hariri, to be the first suicide bomber in Qardaha, but failed to add any information about his supposed accomplices.

A Facebook page dedicated to Col. Suheil al-Hasan, considered the regime’s leading ground commander, maintained throughout that a rocket strike was responsible, as did a separate page, dedicated to the president’s brother, Gen. Maher Assad.

“Weren’t there any checkpoints?” was a typical reaction by commenters on the pro-regime social media outlets, while some defended the authorities’ performance, arguing that no set of defensive measures could be perfect.

A pro-regime Facebook news page from the nearby coastal town of Jableh commented, “A car bomb or a rocket in Qardaha? Our social media was lost today, between all of the confirmations and denials.”

The page blamed state media outlets for the confusion because they were busy running news “about a penguin giving birth at the South Pole, and what [the new bird] would be called.”