SYRIA: Syria said yesterday that it would not tolerate terrorism after an armed group set off a bomb in the diplomatic quarter of the capital, Damascus, on Tuesday night and four people were killed in ensuing gun battles.
Syrians were shocked by the unprecedented strike at the heart of the autocratic state, which tolerates no dissent.
Members of the Syrian security forces exchanged fire with four men after they detonated a car-bomb outside an empty former UN building in the Mazze district on Tuesday evening, killing two members of the armed group and wounding and detaining two others, the state SANA news agency said. A policeman and a woman bystander were also killed.
Calm returned to the upmarket Mazze district yesterday, where traffic was moving slowly as Syrians gazed in amazement at a charred four-storey building, strewn glass and burnt-out cars. The police presence seemed to have relaxed by late afternoon.
The security forces stormed a building used by the gunmen and found a small cache of arms and explosives, according to Syrian state television. Footage showed rocket-propelled grenades.
A Syrian government official told the Al Jazeera satellite television channel that the armed group was small but bent on destabilising Syria.
"This is an isolated incident . . . Syria is a safe country and will remain a safe country," the country's tourism minister, Mr Saadallah Agha al-Kalaa, told reporters. He said that the government was trying to ascertain the nationalities of the assailants. It would announce details of its investigation in due course.
Syria has yet to suggest a motive for the bombing, but Imad Shoueibi, a political analyst based in Damascus, blamed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
"I think al-Qaeda wanted a media explosion to send a message to the Americans that it can reach any target, even highly secure countries like Syria," Mr Shoueibi told Reuters. "This also aims to make Syria pay for its role in the campaign against terror."
The United States accuses Syria of sponsoring terrorism, sheltering "terrorists" and failing to stop foreign fighters crossing into neighbouring Iraq. But Syria says that it has done its utmost to control the border and has helped the US in its "war against terror".
The US embassy, which is located in a different part of Damascus, said that it would remain closed yesterday. A spokesman urged Americans living and working in Damascus to stay in their homes.
Syrians were unsure yesterday whether to point the finger at Islamic radicals or write the incident off as some undefined conspiracy by their old foe, the United States. Some observed that US backing for Israel and the Iraq war, which most Arabs opposed, had put Western interests in the firing line.
"It is clear from what I see that these people wanted to hit anything foreign, anything to do with America," said Ms Mona Sweid, a Damascus resident.
Syria's Interior Ministry condemned the "terrorist" incident and said that Damascus had been fighting terrorism for more than 25 years.
Syria, which is ruled by a rival faction of the Baath Party toppled in Iraq, cracked down ferociously on Islamist insurgents in the early 1980s, crushing an Islamist uprising in the city of Hama.
With the exception of unrest in remote Kurdish areas last month, it has seen little violence in the four years since Bashar al-Assad succeeded his late father, Hafez, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for three decades.
Activists have repeatedly called on the Syria authorities to loosen their stranglehold on freedom of expression, which they claim can cause people to turn to violence. "This extremism occurred because freedom was strangled, as was the means of peaceful expression," human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni said. "No one is against providing security for people, but using security as a way to suppress people leads to more extremism."
Another activist, Mr Michel Kilo, said that Tuesday's bombing incident was indiscriminate. He and Mr Bunni urged the state to give suspects a fair trial. Syria says that it has arrested two people so far. "I think there should be a judicial investigation, which should be published, and they should be given what any other suspect gets, which is a fair trial and the right to defend themselves," Mr Kilo said.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in an interview shown on television yesterday that the Iraqi insurgency was "legitimate resistance".
"You are talking now about resistance which is against the occupation forces," Mr Assad said in comments aired on Al Jazeera.
Asked if the resistance was legitimate, he said: "Well, of course, it's understood that way".