The bombing last Wednesday in
Damascus of President Bashar Assad’s national security headquarters, the
most significant blow yet to the Assad regime, was perpetrated by an
Islamist group and not the Free Syrian Army, as was initially claimed,
according to an Israeli expert on Arab affairs.
This achievement, by a local radical
group, will carry significance in the sectarian struggle for power that
is sure to come in the wake of Assad’s departure, said Dr. Mordechai
Kedar, an expert on Arab affairs at Bar-Ilan University.
The July 18 blast killed Defense
Minister Daoud Rajha, the highest ranking Christian in the regime; Assef
Shawkat, the president’s brother-in-law and deputy commander of the
military; Hassan Turkmani, military adviser to the foreign minister; and
Hisham Ikhtiyar, the national security chief. The four were an
instrumental part of the regime’s brutal efforts to extinguish the
17-month-old uprising in Syria. The blow, in the heart of Damascus,
appears to have hastened the end of Assad’s rule.
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