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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syrians kill 1, arrest 3 Jund al-Shams |
| 2005-09-09 |
| Security forces clashed with Islamic militants in northeastern Syria on Thursday, killing one and arresting three others in the country's latest move against a group accused of planning bomb attacks, the official news agency said. One security member was also wounded. The clash with members of Jund al-Sham militant group occurred in Khashman area on the outskirts of the city of Hasaka, 440 miles northeast of Damascus, said a Syrian official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was giving details not in the official release. A human rights activist in Hasaka, Nidal Darwish, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that "heavy exchange of fire took place in Khashman quarter, a poor area northeast of Hasakah, led to the killing of one person and wounding two others who were detained." The Syrian official said security forces surrounded the gunmen's hideout and asked them to surrender but instead they threw grenades and opened fire at the force. The force then stormed the hideout killing one and detaining two gunmen, he said. The official news agency SANA later said one of the gunmen was killed and three were captured "with their weapons and are being interrogated." The incident occurred a week after security forces killed five Jund al-Sham members near the city of Hama about 120 miles north of Damascus. Jund al-Sham, whose name in Arabic means Soldiers of Syria, is a well-known organization that was set up in Afghanistan by Syrian, Palestinian and Jordanian militants and has links to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Syrian authorities have been monitoring the group for months and had previously clashed with its members, who were believed to be planning to launch bomb attacks in Damascus. Terrorist attacks are rare in this tightly controlled country. Last April, police raided a militant hide-out hours after a mysterious attack in the Syrian capital's diplomatic quarter that killed four people and targeted a building once occupied by the United Nations. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |