BEIRUT, 30 April 2004 — Syrian Information Minister Ahmad Al-Hassan said in remarks published yesterday that attacks in Damascus were carried out by four men who may have links with the Al-Qaeda terror network.
“Two attackers were killed and two others were severely injured,” Hassan told the Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that the four were from “different nationalities.”
“Given the situation in the region and the terrorist developments ... especially since the US occupation of Iraq and the daily crimes committed by the government of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon against the Palestinians, accusation fingers do not exclude Al-Qaeda,” he said.
Hassan said gunbattles started late Tuesday after security forces spotted the four men in what turned out to be a booby-trapped car near the Canadian Embassy in Mazzeh district in west Damascus.
He said men stepped down from the car, detonated the vehicle and sought cover in an abandoned nearby building formerly used by the United Nations where they clashed with security forces. The men then tried to flee aboard a second car but the vehicle crashed into a wall after security forces opened fire, killing two of the men and wounding the two others, he said.
A policeman and a passerby — a schoolteacher — were killed in the shootout, he added. Hassan did not indicate what might have been the target of the car bomb.
The official investigating the attack, said yesterday he did not believe that the attackers were Syrian nationals. Ahmad Haj Ali, an adviser to the Syrian information minister, said he “ruled out” that the four terrorists came from Syria, but it was possible that they had obtained forged Syrian documents.
He said some of the attackers had foreign features and did not look Arab, but denied that he had any further details on the terrorists’ identities. He also said that the attack did not indicate that its perpetrators were linked to the Al-Qaeda network.
“There may be a moral influence and the events may reveal that they have some link. But it (the attack) doesn’t indicate that they (the attackers) are aware of the Syrian internal situation, it is as if they were pushed, motivated or programmed,” Ali said.
Ali denied claims by media reports that the attack was fabricated by Syrians to avoid US sanctions, saying, “Syria is stable not only in social and security terms but also in moral terms.”
