Syria says suicide attacker behind weekend bombing

State-run media say assailant belonged to Muslim extremist group and that car crossed from neighboring Arab country day before attack.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
syria bomb reconstruction 224.88 (photo credit: AP)
syria bomb reconstruction 224.88
(photo credit: AP)
The attack that killed 17 people in Damascus this weekend was carried out by a suicide bomber who belonged to a Muslim extremist group, Syria's state-run media said Monday. The official news agency SANA and state television said that preliminary findings show that the GMC Suburban used in the bombing crossed into Syria from a neighboring Arab country a day before Saturday's bombing. They did not name the neighboring country in their reports, but Syria has borders with three Arab nations - Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan - as well as Turkey. Saturday's 440 pound car bomb near a Syrian security complex on the southern outskirts of the capital was the biggest and deadliest in the tightly controlled country since the 1980s when the government fought an uprising by Muslim militants. SANA said authorities are conducting DNA tests to identify the attacker and that several people have been detained in connection with the attack. The investigation and hunt for suspects continues, it said, without giving details. SANA said the group, which it did not name, follows a "takfiri" ideology of Islam that urges Sunni Muslims to kill anyone they consider an infidel. The Syrian report came a week after Syria massed thousands of troops on its borders with neighboring Lebanon. In the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, a car bomb hit a bus carrying Lebanese troops Monday, killing 5 and injuring 25, most of them soldiers. President Bashar Assad warned recently that "extremist forces" were operating in northern Lebanon and looking to destabilize Syria, apparently referring to the Sunni militants who have clashed for months with pro-Syrian gunmen in Tripoli. The Syrian government has been battling Muslim militants it blames for recent attacks. In September 2006, Islamic militants tried to storm the US Embassy in Damascus in an unusually bold attack in which three assailants and a Syrian guard were killed. Three months earlier, a battle between Syrian security forces and militants near the Defense Ministry left four militants and a police officer dead. Officials blamed those attacks on Jund al-Sham, or Soldiers of Syria - an al-Qaida-linked group. Militants often denounce Assad's regime for its secularism and have at times called for its overthrow.