Report: Assad ordered deadly Damascus blasts
Syrian regime ordered attacks that killed 55 in capital in order to fake presence of foreign terror, Al Arabiya reports
Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime was behind two car bomb attacks that killed 55 people outside a military intelligence complex in Damascus' Qazzaz district on May 10, Al Arabiya reported Sunday, citing newly-leaked documents.
The documents are said to be part of a set of highly-classified Syrian security files obtained by the Qatar-based news network from opposition sources.
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According to the report, Syria's foreign ministry blamed the twin bombing in the capital on foreign-backed terrorists. However, the leaked documents allegedly implicate the Syrian regime in the deadly blasts.
In a document sent from the presidential palace on May 8, two days before the fatal explosions, Maj. Gen. Dhu al-Himma Shalish, head of the Syrian president's special security forces, tells Saqr Mannon, a top air force intelligence official, about the importance of convincing the international community that foreign terror forces are stirring conflict in Syria.
According to the report, Shalish said that his orders follow instructions from the "joint command," possibly a reference to Iran, Russia and the Syrian regime.
Shalish instructed Mannon on how to carry out the bombing. The major general further indicated that he was acting under Assad's direct orders.
'Assad agreed to sacrifice hundreds'
A second leaked document, this time sent from the army headquarters and signed by Mannon, orders Suhail Hassan, a colonel in the Syrian air force intelligence, to apparently carry out the attack on Qazzaz, and to report back once the mission is completed.
According to the leaked files, Assad agreed to sacrifice hundreds of citizens and low-ranking security officials in an attempt to sway the international public opinion in his favor.
On Saturday, Al Arabiya cited leaked files in its report that Assad had ordered two Syrian air force pilots killed after their jet was shot down by Syrian antiaircraft missiles. But Western sources told Ynet military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai that the pilots died when their jet crashed.
The reports by the news network could part of an effort to further undermine Assad's position with the use of propaganda.
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