|
Syria ex-Qaida Denies Involvement in Damascus Bombings
[AnNahar] Rebel factions, including al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate the Fateh al-Sham...formerly al-Nusra, the current false nose and mustache of al-Qaeda in the Levant... Front, issued rare denials of any involvement in twin suicide kabooms that killed 32 people in Damascus on Wednesday. The Tahrir al-Sham alliance, which is dominated by Fateh al-Sham, said it "denies any link to the Damascus kabooms". "Our goals are confined to security branches and military barracks of the criminal regime and its allies," it said in a statement published on Telegram late Wednesday. Fateh al-Sham had earlier grabbed credit for twin bombings which killed 74 people on Saturday, most of them Iraqi pilgrims who had travelled to the Syrian capital to visit Shiite shrines. It also grabbed credit for bombings that killed 42 people in Syria's third city Homs last month. Wednesday's attacks targeted a Damascus courthouse, where 32 people were killed and 100 maimed, and a restaurant in the west of the capital, where 25 people were maimed. There has been no claim of responsibility. The bombings drew condemnation from Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham ...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014... which described them as "criminal terrorist blasts." It accused the government of provocation, an allegation also levelled by another Islamist rebel group, Jaish al-Islam  ...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...(Army of Islam), which said the attacks had been "staged". "The regime of (Bashar al-) Assad achieved two central goals: tarnishing the revolution with the stain of terrorism... and creating sectarian tensions within a united people," the group said. The attacks came as the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... prepares to convene a new round of peace negotiations between the government and the opposition in Geneva next Thursday. Rebel delegates stayed away from parallel talks which wrapped up in the Kazakh capital Astana on Wednesday. Posted by: trailing wife 2017-03-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=483620 |