The mysterious killing last week of a top Syrian general and key aide to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has sparked intense speculation about internal feuding within the regime's intelligence apparatus. Syria is at a critical juncture as it pursues indirect peace talks with Israel and a closer relationship with the West, while attempting to maintain its long-standing regional alliances with Iran and the militant Shia Hezbollah of Lebanon.
General Mohammed Suleiman, one of Mr Assad's closest confidantes, was shot dead on Friday at his chalet in the prestigious Rimal al-Zahabieh, Arabic for "Golden Sands", seafront resort, 9 miles north of Tartous on the Mediterranean coast. A sniper, apparently located out at sea, shot him in the head, neck and stomach and he was pronounced dead at a hospital in Tartous.
Assassinations of leading regime figures are rare in Syria, and the Syrian authorities have scrambled to prevent news of the incident from leaking. Adding to the whirlwind of speculation is that General Suleiman was an Alawite, the same religious sect to which the Assad family belongs and which forms the backbone of the nominally secular regime in Damascus.
Mr Assad, who is said to be deeply upset by the murder, continued with his schedule over the weekend, travelling to Tehran for talks with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
General Suleiman's relationship with Mr Assad stems from the mid-1990s when the latter abandoned his ophthalmology studies in London and returned to Damascus from London on the death of his elder brother Basil in 1994, who was being groomed to succeed their father, Hafez al-Assad, as head of state.
Nicknamed "the imported general" because of his fair complexion and foreign looks, General Suleiman was chief military aide to Mr Assad in the late 1990s with additional important posts overseeing weapons research and development and army recruitment among others.
After Mr Assad became president in 2000, General Suleiman ran his intelligence affairs, and is reported to have handled the transfer of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The link with Hezbollah could be connected to General Suleiman's assassination, according to a well-placed Syrian source. The source told The Times that General Suleiman's murder could be retribution for the sacking of top intelligence officers following the assassination in February of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's military commander who died in a car bomb explosion in a Damascus suburb.
According to the source, the heads of several Syrian intelligence agencies were quietly replaced or had their powers stripped from them after the assassination. "The demoted intelligence chiefs may have met and decided on revenge," the source said.
Whether General Suleiman was killed by a clique of disaffected intelligence officials or not, there is no shortage of alternative theories for his death.