Rebel Suicide Bombers Kill Eight in Damascus
Attackers Tried to Hit Police Station
by Jason Ditz, June 23, 2013
A series of suicide bombings have hit the Syrian capital city of Damascus today, as rebels attempted to escalate the fighting in the area. Several bombings were confirmed, and several others were reported foiled by government forces, with at least eight people, including a 3-year-old boy in a Shi’ite neighborhood, killed in the blasts.
At least three bombings were reported in the area around the Rukneddine police station in the city’s far north, where the bombers had hoped to break into the station but instead had to settle for detonating out front. Five were killed there, and an unknown number of others wounded.
Other attackers attempted to hit the national police office in the city’s south, but none were apparently successful, and there were no reported casualties there. Three civilians, including the child, were killed in another attack involving an apparent suicide car bombing in Mazzeh 86, a Shi’ite district.
There were no specific claims of credit from any rebel groups so far, but Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda-linked faction that serves as the rebels’ frontline fighters, has commonly used suicide bombings in its attacks.
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The Syrian War comes to Lebanon as Sidon Explodes into Violence
Posted on 06/24/2013 by Juan Cole
The Syrian civil war spilled over onto Lebanon dramatically on Sunday and again on Monday morning when violent clashes broke out between the Salafi militia of Sheikh Ahmad Asir in Sidon and the Lebanese army and Shiite Hizbullah fighters. The army maintains that the Salafis (hard line Sunni Muslims influenced by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism) attacked a military checkpoint in the city.
Asir accuses the Lebanese army and the Lebanese political establishment of being in Shiite Iran’s back pocket. (In fact, the Lebanese political elite is fractured and deeply divided. Sunni politicians tend to side with Syria’s rebels, whereas Shiites and Christians are afraid of the extremism of rebel groups such as the Nusra Front).
He castigates Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah as an idolator (ancient Arabs used to worship a goddess, al-Lat, instead of the cosmic God, Allah; Asir calls Nasrallah “Nasr al-Lat”.) He backs the rebels in Syria even as Hizbullah backs the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad.
When Nasrallah sent Hizbullah fighters to al-Qusayr in Syria, Asir sent Salafi fighters from Lebanon to oppose them on the rebel side. I said at the time that these steps on both sides were dangerous, since the next stage would be for the two to fight at home. Et voila.
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