The Syrian government on Wednesday blamed a terrorist group that could be related to al-Qaeda for the violence in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus that left four dead.
Syrian security, the most-feared in the Middle East, was on Wednesday night holding two of the alleged gunmen and also raided a house in which a cache of weapons was said to be hidden.
A Syrian official said yesterday that the government had not yet ”100% established the group’s identity”.
But he added: ”It seems to be an al-Qaeda-style group or some group that shares their ideology.”
He recalled that the Muslim Brotherhood, a forerunner of al-Qaeda that still exists in Syria, had been responsible for a series of attacks in the early 1980s, including an assassination attempt on the present president’s father.
The group was brutally suppressed in 1982.
”The Syrian regime is not on good terms with Islamists,” the official said. ”It is a secular government. The Americans have also said that Syrian security helped American security with information that prevented the killing of many Americans.”
The Syrian president, Bashar Assad, confirmed during a visit to London last year that Syria had passed intelligence to Washington to help the fight against al-Qaeda.
Islamist militant groups have been mounting attacks in Jordan and Saudi Arabia in recent weeks but have not been active in Syria until now.
The violence on Tuesday began when a group detonated a car bomb outside an empty United Nations building in the Mazze district. The building was badly damaged.
A clash followed between four alleged gunmen and Syrian security, in which a policeman, two of the gunmen and a schoolteacher caught in the crossfire died.
According to the Syrian official, the group attacked a mini-bus, but it was empty apart from the driver, who managed to escape.
They sprayed the street with bullets but ”fortunately it was almost empty”, the official said.
Syrian television showed a cache of explosives and arms, including rocket-propelled grenades, found in the town of Khan al-Sheih, about 32km outside Damascus. The official said this was evidence that more attacks had been planned.
Another Syrian official told al-Jazeera television the cache was small and the number of people involved was ”limited”.
Syria is anxious to protect its fragile tourist trade.
”This is an isolated incident… Syria is a safe country and will remain a safe country,” the Syrian tourism minister, Saadallah Agha al-Kalaa, said. He added that the government was establishing the nationalities of the attackers.
It suits the Syrian government to pin the blame on al-Qaeda or a related group in an effort to win sympathy in Washington, which has been threatening sanctions against Damascus for supporting two anti-Israeli groups, Hamas and Hizbullah.
However, Assad will have angered the US on Wednesday with a television interview which was recorded before the Damascus attacks.
”You are talking now about resistance which is against the occupation forces,” Assad told al-Jazeera. Asked if the resistance was legitimate, he said: ”Well, of course, it’s understood that way.” – Guardian Unlimited Â