GENEVA — dA double suicide bombing killed at least 45 people and wounded dozens more near a Shiite shrine south of Damascus, the Syrian capital, state television reported Sunday.  The Sayeda Zeinab shrine, in what was once a busy market area, has been a major symbol that has helped motivate Shiite militia recruits from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan fighting in Syria on the side of the government, with their leaders exhorting them to defend the shrine during the war.  Social media accounts associated with the Islamic State said the extremist group had taken responsibility for the blast. The area has become a foothold for Hezbollah and other Shiite militias assisting the government in fighting insurgents in the Damascus suburbs, but it also houses civilians displaced from Shiite towns in northern Syria.  The attack came as Syrian government representatives and members of the opposition were gathered in Geneva before the planned — but repeatedly postponed — peace talks aimed at finding a political solution to the nearly five-year conflict.  For the first time on Sunday, the United Nations mediator Staffan de Mistura met briefly with the main opposition bloc. No details were immediately available on the discussion but the opposition was expected to press for progress on relieving human suffering in Syria before entering into formal talks.  Members of the opposition said Saturday night that they would not sit down with the government or engage in any formal negotiations until sieges were lifted and bombardment of civilians stopped — measures mandated by specific United Nations resolutions on Syria as well as by international law.  In Syria, humanitarian officials continued to press for access to besieged areas, especially the town of Madaya, which is surrounded by pro-government forces and has dozens of people in need of hospitalization and medical care due to severe malnutrition, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other aid groups.  The Geneva talks, the first in two years, come after a United Nations Security Council resolution laid out a road map aimed at ending the conflict.  In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry made a public appeal on Sunday, asking all sides to “seize the opportunity for serious negotiations” to end the conflict, saying that the diplomatic effort had reached a “pivotal stage.”  “While battlefield dynamics can affect negotiating leverage, in the end there is no military solution to this conflict,” Mr. Kerry said in remarks streamed on the State Department’s website.  “Without negotiations, the bloodshed will drag on until the last city is reduced to rubble and virtually every home, every form of infrastructure, and every semblance of civilization is destroyed,” he said. “And that will ensure an increased number of terrorists created by, and attracted to, this fight. This conflict could easily engulf the region if left to spiral completely out of control.”  Mr. Kerry once again denounced the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying it was “by far the primary source of killing, torture, and deprivation in this war,” but his appeal seemed focused more on those opposition groups who have so far balked at direct talks with the Syrian government, even as negotiators gathered in Geneva.  Mr. Kerry has been a key broker pushing for the talks, along with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. The two men spoke by telephone on Saturday as momentum stalled.  According to the official Russian news agency TASS, the diplomats agreed “at the initial stage of the negotiations all sides must concentrate on settling humanitarian issues,” such as delivering aid to besieged areas, “and only then get to political reforms and elections.” That was a new signal that Russia had agreed to begin with humanitarian measures, as the opposition has demanded.  Mr. Kerry said that a political resolution in Syria — beginning with a cease-fire and including a political transition based on Security Council resolutions — would be the most effective way to isolate and weaken the Islamic State while addressing the dire humanitarian conditions in places like Madaya, where starvation is widespread.  “The road ahead remains challenging; success is not assured,” Mr. Kerry said, “but we have seen through years of savage fighting what the absence of serious negotiation yields.”  Somini Sengupta contributed reporting from Geneva and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.
Islamic State social media accounts said the group was responsible for the attack, which came as opposing sides of the Syrian conflict were gathered in Geneva for talks.