BEIRUT ? Thousands of people gathered in the Syrian capital Saturday to mourn 44 people killed in a twin car bombing, amid fears that Syrian authorities would crack down harder on the country?s protest movement in the wake of Friday?s attack.
Syrian media showed pictures of coffins draped in the national flag laid out in the Ummayad mosque in the heart of Damascus, with crowds of people at prayer and rallying outside the building.
Leaders from different religions and sects said prayers over the dead, while the minister for religious affairs, Mohammad Abdul-Satar al-Sayyed, called on the Arab League and the United Nations to ?cease to embrace the false news propagated by biased mass media and those who encourage violence, murder and destruction,? reported the Syrian Arab News Agency.
Syrian officials said the attack was probably perpetrated by al-Qaeda, while their opponents have suggested that the authorities themselves could have been responsible. The blasts came nine months into a scattered but nationwide anti-government uprising, which security forces have attempted to suppress with a brutality that has drawn condemnation from among the international community.
A first delegation from the Arab League arrived in Syria on Thursday to oversee the implementation of an agreement for Syrian troops to withdraw from populated areas. But the bombings, along with a continued crackdown that activists say has killed dozens in the past two days, stoked fears that the delegates? influence will be limited.
?We are under fire,? said an activist known as Abu Rami in the city of Homs, where there has been a heavy security presence for months. He said 12 people, including three children, were killed in the city on Saturday. ?I don?t know where are these stupid observers . .?.?. I feel nothing but disappointment.?
?People don?t feel the Arab League monitors will be able to lessen the bloodshed or protect civilians,? said Wissam Tarif, a human rights activist with the Avaaz group. ?The general feeling is that the monitors should get out.?
Although the U.N. Security Council issued a statement condemning the attack, no progress was made Friday on a resolution that many Western countries have called for but that China and Russia have blocked. Russia has recently softened its stance and on Friday proposed a new version of a resolution against Syria, but Western government dismissed it as still not harsh enough.
As protests continued across the country, some analysts warned that Friday?s coordinated attacks could herald an era of hardening sectarian tension. But Aram Nerguizian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned against hasty action. ?There is no good option in Syria when it comes to intervention,? he said. ?These things have a tendency to go bad.?
Rami Abdulrahman, of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said he thought the Syrian authorities would respond to the bombing by cracking down more stringently on protesters. The uptick in violence by no means indicated that the government led by President Bashar al-Assad would fall imminently, he said.
?Some people say that we will be finished with Assad in two days or two weeks, but they are dreaming,? he said. ?A change to democracy is not for dreamers, it is for real life.?
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=a620050bc1c17ec662cf166a24993238
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