This from VOA:
Grenades Hit Syria’s Baath Party Building in Damascus
Syrian activists say several rocket-propelled grenades hit a ruling Baath Party building in Damascus Sunday, as President Bashar al-Assad vowed he will not “bow down” to international pressure to ease his brutal crackdown on dissent.
The Local Coordination Committees activist network and several residents Sunday reported numerous explosions in the center of the Syrian capital. They said fire trucks were headed to the area amid a heavy police presence. There was no immediate verification of the reports, and other eyewitnesses saw no signs of damage.
If confirmed, the attack would be the first such incident in the Syrian capital since the anti-government uprising began in March. The reported assault occurred hours after an Arab League deadline passed for Damascus to end the bloodshed.
As security analysts remind us, uprisings against government authority are “centripetal”: they seek the center of power. As long as violence is limited to outlying districts, the ruling clique is in no immediate danger. That attacks are now beginning in Damascus shows that this conflict is entering a dangerous new phase.
Meanwhile, as the social framework breaks down in hotspots like the city of Homs, diversity has, predictably, begun to confer its usual blessings — with savagery on the rise between the majority Sunni population and the Alawites (the offshoot Shia sect to which Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, belongs). Christians are just trying to keep their heads down, but if they have any sense will soon be fleeing in droves.
2 Comments
Just in case anyone’s interested . . .
Alawites are often called an offshoot sect of the Shia, but if you look into their belief system, you’ll find that they actually have little to do with Islam, let alone with the Shia. They align themselves with Shia for protection against the Sunnis.
Jeffery Hodges
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Yes, that’s a good point, Jeffery. The Alawites can fairly be called an “offshoot” of Shia Islam on historical grounds (their divergence from Shi’ism coming later than the Shia – Sunni split), but they are certainly pretty heterodox — rejecting, as I understand it, at least three of the Pillars of Islam. And like the Druze and the Yezidi, many of the tenets of their religion are kept secret from outsiders.