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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Five militants killed in Syria clashes |
| 2005-09-05 |
| Five members of the Islamist militant group Jund al-Sham were killed late Friday in clashes with Syrian security forces who raided their village hideout. "Anti-terrorist forces on Friday evening entered in force a hideout of the terrorist group Jund al-Sham in a village of the Hama governorate," 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Damascus, an interior ministry source told the SANA news agency. "A clash followed in which the five members of the group were killed," the source added, saying that two members of the security forces were also wounded. Jund al-Sham, or "Organisation of the Soldiers of the Levant," was first heard of in March when an Internet statement in its name claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a theatre in Qatar that killed a Briton. It has also claimed the October bombings in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba which killed 34 people most of them Israeli tourists and an oil refinery explosion in Texas that left 15 people dead. These claims were posted on the Internet and it is not possible to verify their authenticity. The interior ministry source said that the group was planning new operations against Syria and had built up a cache of weapons at its base in the village of Jibril. "The terrorist group was on the verge of executing operations to destabilise security and Syrian society," the source said. "The group was installed in an isolated home in the village of Jibril in the Hama governorate which served as a base for its operations," added the source, saying that arms, bombs and explosives had been found in the hideout. Syrian police claimed to have broken up the group in June after a Damascus shootout that left its chief and another member dead, as well as a policeman. However the group then went on to kill four Syrian policemen in August during clashes in the town of Maday, with several of the militants escaping after the shootout. The secular Baath party has dominated Syrian political life for more than four decades and all Islamist groups are outlawed. The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood has been proscribed on pain of death since 1980. The United States has accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent militants from slipping over its border to join the insurgency in Iraq, but recent months have seen a number of clashes with security forces. In July, security forces captured two "terrorists" and a security officer was killed in a dawn clash with gunmen who included former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |