Four men accused of carrying out an attack in Syria's capital last month were Syrian Islamic extremists who acted on their own, Syrian officials said Saturday.
| Just decided to get themselves killed in a four-man uprising, did they? |
Syria's state-run news agency quoted an Interior Ministry official as identifying the assailants as Ayman Shlash and Mohammed al-Nahhar, said to have died in the April 27 clash with security forces in a diplomatic quarter of Damascus. Two others, identified as Ahmed Shlash and Ezzo al-Hussein, were arrested. The unidentified official did not say whether the men were related or what their motive was.
| I thought three of them were brothers and one was a cousin? |
But a Syrian close to the government told The Associated Press last week that among the men were two brothers, the Shlashes, and a cousin, and that they were among Arab volunteers who went to Iraq early in the U.S.-led war on Saddam Hussein's regime. The Syrian, who did not want to be identified, said the attackers came from the small town of Artouz, about 12 miles south of the capital. Two attackers, a policeman and a civilian passer-by were killed in the attack in the upscale Mazza neighborhood when gunmen detonated a bomb and opened fire. Security forces had engaged them in a 90-minute gunbattle. Syrian officials and diplomats said soon afterward that the clash, in which an abandoned building that once housed United Nations offices was hit and set afire, was the work of terrorists — a rarity in this tightly controlled Arab country. One report said the attackers were foreigners, another said Syrians might be among them. Since then, the government has backed away from suggestions international terrorists were to blame. Syria's prime minister said Tuesday that attack was a homegrown, isolated incident. He did not specify whether the attackers had been in Iraq, but said there was no foreign link. |