A powerful car bomb exploded in Damascus on Friday, inflicting many casualties and buffeting a shaky temporary truce in the Syrian conflict on the occasion of a Muslim religious holiday.

State television said the "terrorist car bomb" had killed five people and wounded 32, according to "preliminary figures."

Opposition activists said the bomb had gone off near a makeshift children's playground built for the Eid al-Adha holiday in the southern Daf al-Shok district of the capital.

---

 

Fighting erupted around Syria earlier as both sides violated the Eid al-Adha cease-fire arranged by international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but violence was far less intense than usual.

The Syrian military said it had responded to attacks by insurgents on army positions, in line with its announcement  Thursday that would cease military activity during the four-day holiday but would react to rebel actions.

Brahimi's cease-fire appeal had won widespread international support, including from Russia, China and Iran, President Bashar al-Assad's main foreign allies.

Syrian military agrees to Eid cease-fire; residents report shelling

The U.N.-Arab League envoy had hoped to build on the truce to calm a 19-month-old conflict that has killed an estimated 32,000 people and worsened instability in the Middle East.

Violence appeared to wane in some areas, but truce breaches by both sides swiftly marred Syrians' hopes for a peaceful celebration of Eid al-Adha, the climax of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

"We are not celebrating Eid here," said a woman in a besieged Syrian town near the Turkish border, speaking above the noise of incessant gunfire and shelling. "No one is in the mood to celebrate. Everyone is just glad they are alive."

Her husband, a portly, bearded man in his 50s, said they and their five children had just returned to the town after nine days camped out on a farm with other families to escape clashes.

"We have no gifts for our children. We can't even make phone calls to our families," he said, a young daughter on his lap.

'Painful disaster'
The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shiite Iran supporting Assad and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque called on Arabs and Muslims to take "practical and urgent" steps to stop bloodshed in Syria.

Syrian opposition skeptical of 'feeble' ceasefire plan

"The world should bear responsibility for this prolonged and painful disaster (in Syria) and the responsibility is greater for the Arabs and Muslims who should call on each other to support the oppressed against the oppressor," Sheikh Saleh Mohammed al-Taleb told worshipers during Eid prayers.

For some in Syria, there was no respite from war, but by dusk the death toll was still significantly lower than in recent days, when often between 150 to 200 people have been killed, according to reports that cannot be independently verified.

Assad himself, who has vowed to defeat what he says are Islamist fighters backed by Syria's enemies abroad, was shown on state television attending Eid prayers at a Damascus mosque.

The prime minister, information minister and foreign minister, as well as the mufti, Syria's top Muslim official, were filmed praying alongside the 47-year-old president.

Assad, smiling and apparently relaxed, shook hands and exchanged Eid greetings with other worshipers afterward.

Military stalemate
Protests against Assad burst out in March last year, inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere, but repression by security forces led to an armed insurgency, plunging Syria into a civil war that neither side has proved able to win or seems willing to end.

A commander from the rebel Free Syrian Army had said his fighters would honor the cease-fire but demanded Assad meet opposition demands for the release of thousands of detainees.

Some Islamist militants, including the Nusra Front, rejected the truce. Many groups were skeptical that it would hold.

"We do not care about this truce. We are cautious. If the tanks are still there and the checkpoints are still there then what is the truce?" asked Abu Moaz, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, a group whose units fight in and around Damascus.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Syrian military agrees to Eid cease-fire; residents report shelling
• Olympic medals 'stolen' as athletes party at nightclub
• Outrage after video shows Chinese teacher abusing kindergarteners
• 'The new Afghanistan'? West turns its attention to Mali
• BBC ripped for handling of sex abuse scandal tied to former host
• Hate crimes rise, far right strengthens as Greece economy sinks
• Top 10 foreign policy issues facing a new president
• How a viral death rumor pushed Fidel Castro out of retirement

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Syrian government forces killed at least 20 people on Tuesday when they shelled a bakery in a neighborhood under rebel control in the contested northern city of Aleppo, opposition activists said.

The dead included women and children, they said. Video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed decapitated bodies amid scattered bread loaves.

Two shells hit the bakery, located in the eastern Hananu neighborhood, in the early afternoon, said Majd Nour, an opposition campaigner in Aleppo. Free Syrian Army fighters were guarding it at the time, he said.

Aleppo is Syria's biggest city and commercial hub. Rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad launched an offensive to capture it last month and street fighting has taken place on a daily basis since then.

Shell lands in Turkey
Earlier in the day an anti-aircraft shell fired from Syria hit a health center across the border in Turkey's Hatay province but there were no immediate reports of injuries, CNN Turk television reported.

Turkey has bolstered its military presence along its 560-mile border with Syria and has been responding to gunfire and mortar shells hitting its territory from fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces.

Top 10 foreign policy issues facing a new president

The district governor's office said it had no immediate information on the incident.

Tension between the two neighbors, once close allies, is at its highest since Ankara turned against Assad last year over his violent crackdown on anti-government protests.

---

International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who ended a four-day visit to Damascus on Tuesday, has pushed for a ceasefire to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, which starts on Friday, hoping for a respite from daily death tolls of around 150.

But he did not win a public commitment to a truce in his talks with Assad, and the rebels say there is little point to a ceasefire that cannot be monitored or enforced.

Report: Several killed in Damascus car bomb ahead of Syria truce talks

The Turkish military has fired on Syria 87 times, killing 12 Syrian soldiers and destroying several tanks in retaliation for Syrian shells and mortar bombs landing inside Turkey, the Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported on Saturday.

In Syria, fighting raged on Tuesday as rebels battled to seize an army base close to the main north-south highway. The rebels say its capture would be a big step toward creating a "safe zone" allowing them to focus on Assad's southern strongholds.

Battle for Wadi al-Deif
Assad is fighting an insurgency that grew out of protests 19 months ago and has escalated into a civil war in which 30,000 people have been killed. His overstretched army has lost swathes of territory and relies on air power to keep rebels at bay.

For two weeks Assad’s forces have been tied down, battling rebels in Wadi al-Deif, east of the town of Maarat al-Numan. If the town fell to rebels, who already control northern border crossings to Turkey, Assad would be dependent on a single land route - from the Mediterranean port of Latakia - to supply his forces fighting to win back Aleppo.

"The battle started 11 days ago. At first we sent small groups to liberate (the base) and we were surprised by the resistance the regime forces showed," said Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled Hmood, a former army officer who defected to fight Assad.

"The regime is fighting fiercely. It seems that it doesn't care if it loses thousands of troops in order to keep its control over the compound."

Syrian opposition skeptical of 'feeble' ceasefire plan

Hmood said he believed around 400 soldiers were defending Wadi al-Deif - a group of barracks barely 500 yards from the Damascus-Aleppo road and backed by air power that Assad has deployed against rebels and residents of a nearby town.

The base may also be an important fuel depot, holding at least five million liters of kerosene in five underground bunkers, according to Hmood.

Anti-Assad activists say 40 civilians were killed in air strikes on the town last Thursday in one of the most intense air offensives of the Syrian conflict.

But its efforts to send military reinforcements have been repulsed by the besieging rebels. The last attempt on Sunday ended when four tanks were destroyed and the remnants of an army column had to pull back. "We have noticed that the best strategy is to hit its supply line. We have been harming the regime a lot by hitting the reinforcements it is sending."

The rebels still face challenges to take the base. Although they have acquired increasingly deadly arms, including artillery and anti-aircraft weapons, they have regularly complained that they have only limited supplies to keep up the fight.

Reuters contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Top 10 foreign policy issues facing a new president
• Castro: I'm so healthy I don't 'even remember what a headache is'
• Hate crimes increase, extreme right strengthens as Greece economy sinks
• Report: Several killed in Damascus car bomb ahead of Syria truce talks
• Source: No deal yet on US-Iran nuclear talks
• Video: Dutch art heist a 'significant loss,' museum says
• Kateri Tekakwitha named first Native American saint in Vatican ceremony
• Documents add to evidence of security fears before Benghazi attack
• Newlywed Afghan beheaded for her refusal to become prostitute

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

LONDON -- International religious pilgrimage: the business of devotion and divinity, miracles and mysticism for millions of worshippers. It is both a life-affirming contemplation for the faithful and the lifeblood of the communities surrounding popular shrines.

Global “pilgrimage tourism” encompasses a multitude of businesses from tour operators and shrine administrators, to road-side souvenir stalls and pilgrims’ hostels.

Religious travel generates at least $8 billion a year for shrine-centered economies and provides employment for thousands, according to academics — and being able to measure the celestial and spiritual elements of pilgrimage in monetary terms is far from a modern phenomenon; it’s as ancient as the act of spiritual travel itself.

---

“Pilgrimage has always been commercial, as has religion,” Manchester University professor Ian Reader told CNBC. “The roots of tourism are in pilgrimage, as the first package tours in Europe were organized by Venetian merchants controlling the Mediterranean. They ran tours to the Christian Holy Land in medieval times.”

Read more business news on CNBC.com

Reader is an expert on the economics of pilgrimage. His book, “Pilgrimage in the Marketplace,” will be published in 2013.

"The contributions of pilgrims to local economies cannot be underestimated,” he stressed. “I have seen estimates that in the early 2000s, pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo in Italy [the mystic saint Padre Pio's pilgrimage site] brought the town in $56.8 million in revenue — and it sustains the local economy.”

The business of saints
Indeed, destinations such as Lourdes or San Giovanni -- that have built their identity around their shrines -- call it religious branding. Entire towns are dedicated to the business of saints. Souvenir stalls, restaurants, hostels and tour operators owe their existence to the 100 million pilgrimages that take place every year.

As with much in the spiritual world, measuring the financial impact of pilgrimage is more art than science. Tourist revenues are subject to seasonal variations, and often the businesses surrounding shrines are reluctant to be seen as mercenaries.

However, tourism scholar S. Vijayanand, author of “Socio Economic Impacts in Pilgrimage Tourism,” published in the International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in January 2012, estimates that pilgrimage tourism is worth up to $8 billion a year globally.

It’s not just spending by tourists generating economic activity. Host countries also benefit from tourist-related infrastructure projects.

Saudi Arabia has just approved a development plan costing $16.5 billion to improve transport facilities -- including a new rail line dubbed "Mecca Metro" -- for the annual 2.5 million pilgrims that visit Mecca on Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage duty for all able-bodies Muslims.

Tourist revenues also provide much of the cash flow for the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy See — the church as an economic entity — recorded a budget shortfall of $19 million in 2011.

But the Vatican City State — the guardian of the Church’s structures and Museums, including the Sistine Chapel — enjoyed a budget surplus of nearly $22 million, thanks to the fervor of tourists.

The big business of illegal gambling

The Vatican might be the heartland of Catholicism’s papal leadership but devotees in search of spiritual succor may opt for Lourdes, the site of a Marian apparition – the name for appearances of Mary -- that now boasts one of the biggest shrines in the world.

“The entire economy of towns such as Lourdes is, in effect, based on pilgrimage,” Reader tells CNBC.

'Souvenir circus'
Indeed, in 2010 Lourdes’ administrators recorded employment of 30 full-time chaplains, 292 full-time lay employees and a further 120 seasonal employees, accounting for nearly four percent of the area’s total population.

They’re assisted by more than 100,000 volunteers who look after the needs of visitors, many of whom journey to Lourdes in search of miracle recoveries from crippling ailments and disabilities.

Whatever solace pilgrims draw from their sojourn, they return in the way of hard currency. Some 90 percent of Lourdes' $23 million  budget is derived from visitor donations.

Some commentators on Catholicism, such as New York Times journalist Jason Horowitz, have bemoaned the commercialism of popular shrines and souvenir stalls, describing the rows of plastic saints or cigarette lighters emblazoned with a benevolent and beatific face as belonging to a “souvenir circus.”

Why fewer Americans are starting new businesses

But Reader of Manchester University disagrees. “Souvenirs are an intrinsic part of the pilgrimage market — without them there would be fewer pilgrims, and pilgrim places would be less lively. My studies show a livelier place attracts more pilgrims.”

The United Nation's World Travel Organization reckoned in 2007 that religious tourism, albeit a loose category, was the “fastest growing part of the travel business.”

Indeed in 2007, the Vatican’s pilgrimage office, the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, was so keen to encourage the laity to visit shrines that it struck a five-year contract with Italian cargo airline Mistral Air and started pilgrimage charter flights around the globe under the slogan “I’m searching for your face, Lord.”

Depression, suicides rise as Euro debt crisis intensifies

Branding and advertising may be a very modern way of reaching today’s pilgrims but the faithful have taken to the road seeking salvation since the Crusades, said Reader.

Fast-forward a millennium, however, and the competition for pilgrims is heating up with hundreds of pilgrimage tours operating online vying to entice millions of would-be pilgrims to undertake a religious journey.

Devotees less devout?
Priests or other religious scholars often oversee the tours, adding a sense of depth and veracity to the journey. However, one priest told the National Catholic Reporter that the religious experience might be diluted by modernity and indeed, the travel.

Modern pilgrims are keener on capturing the moment on their smartphones than quietly savoring the spiritual experience, said Friar Caesar Atuire lamenting the “kind of absenteeism that's becoming very pronounced even in our pilgrimages.”

That points to a whole new target group for tourist operators marketing shrine-related packages. If devotees are perhaps becoming less devout, as it were, perhaps their more secular brethren could come to see the cultural attraction of many religious sites.

The European Commission has recently issued a report that seeks to promote pilgrimage routes as “Cultural Routes”: journeys for everyone, adherent or atheist.

Read more international coverage from NBC News

Penelope Denu, administrator of the commission’s “Cultural Routes,” told CNBC that these pilgrimage routes are not only the preserve of the ardent devotee. “More and more people are now doing these routes that have no religious connection,” she said.

Secular and cultural use of pilgrimage routes such as of the Camino de Compostela in Spain means that hundreds of thousands of visitors no longer carry the symbols of a religious pilgrim, such as a “pilgrim’s passport” or oyster shell -- a symbol synonymous with Santiago-St. James-of Compostela, to whom the route is dedicated -- along the journey.

Business is booming for hostels and firms that line the 485-mile route — an economic success that hasn't gone unnoticed by Eurovia, an association for the establishment of European pilgrimage routes, or the Italian State, which has funded a relaunch for an Italian pilgrimage route with a $12.9 million grant. 

The association is attempting to promote the lesser-traveled Via Francigena, the ancient 1,240-mile pilgrimage route from Britain to Rome that it believes could rival Spain’s Camino.

Georg Kerschbaum, president of Eurovia, told CNBC that the route is becoming more and more popular, spurring the development of infrastructure, such as sleeping accommodation, along the route.

“The Via Francigena would definitely benefit the local economy — you will get people passing through villages that would never usually be visited,” he said. “Little shops can then survive as pilgrims use the route. It’s amazing for the economy.”

Kershbaum adds that even though the Via Francigena is still not so well known, even if only 500 people a year walked it, “that would be 500 more tourists than there were before.”

Professor Reader notes that “commerce has been intrinsic in pilgrimage from the outset.”

Indeed, from the relics of religion traded for over 2000 years to the modern souvenir stalls of Lourdes or the shrine of “Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico,” the booming business of pilgrimage looks set to stay.

“One should not think that there is a distinct separation of ‘religion/pilgrimage’ and ‘money' .... Religion and pilgrimage and money go hand in hand,” Reader concluded.

This article, "Religious Sojourns Fuel Multibillion-Dollar Business," originally appeared on CNBC.com.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Report: Iran commander warns of 'World War III'
• Religious pilgrimages: a multi-billion dollar industry
• Ancient land of 'Beringia' gets protection from US, Russia
• Officials see Iran behind cyber attacks on US banks
• Stay informed: Sign up for our newsletter

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook