State TV: Syrian defense minister killed in suicide blast
SANA via EPA
Syrian Defense Minister Daoud Rajha, center, was reportedly killed on Wednesday.
Updated at 7:04 a.m. ET: Syria’s defense minister has been killed in a suicide blast that hit a government building in Damascus on Wednesday during a high-level meeting, state TV reported.
Defense Minister Dawoud Rajha, 65, a former army general, was the country’s most senior Christian government official. President Bashar Assad appointed him to the post last year.
“The terrorist explosion which targeted the national security building in Damascus occurred during a meeting of ministers and a number of heads of (security) agencies,” state television said.
Al-Mayadeen, a Lebanon-based news channel, said several senior security officials had been killed in the blast, without giving details.
The capital has seen four straight days of clashes pitting government troops against rebels, who are trying to bring down the regime by force. The fighting is an unprecedented challenge to government rule in the tightly controlled capital.
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Activists in Damascus said by telephone that Republican Guards sealed of the Shami hospital in the capital after ambulances had brought casualties from the site of the explosion.
Meanwhile, the revolt against came within sight of Assad’s presidential palace as fighting erupted in major Damascus neighborhoods for a fourth day.
An army barracks near the “palace of the people”, a huge Soviet style complex overlooking the sprawling capital from the western district of Dummar, came under rebel fire around 7.30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. ET), activists and a resident said.
“I could hear the sound of small arms fire and explosions are getting louder and louder from the direction of the barracks,” Yasmine, who works as an architect, said by phone from Dummar.
Video footage broadcast by activists purportedly showed fire in the barracks overnight as a result of an attack by mortar rounds, but residents who saw the fire said they had not heard explosions to indicate it was a result of an attack.
Dummar is a secure area containing many auxiliary installations for the presidential palace and the barracks is just hundreds of yards from the palace itself.
Fighting in Sunni areas Fighting also erupted overnight in the southern neighbourhoods of Asali and Qadam, and Hajar al-Aswad and Tadamun — mainly Sunni Muslim districts housing Damascenes and Palestinian refugees.
Assad and the ruling elite belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has dominated power in Syria since a 1963 coup.
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Government troops used heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns against rebels moving deep in residential neighborhoods, armed mostly with small arms and rocket propelled grenades.
Rebels directed their fire overnight at a large state facility turned headquarters for pro-Assad militia, known as shabbiha, drawn mainly from Alawite enclaves in nearby hills.
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Army tanks and anti-aircraft guns, used as an infantry weapon, took positions in the northern neighbourhood of Barzeh, where hundreds of families from the neighbouring district of Qaboun are seeking shelter.
“Anti-aircraft guns are firing at Qaboun from Barzeh. There are lots of families in the streets with no place to stay. They came from Qaboun and from the outskirts of Barzeh,” said Bassem, one of the activists, speaking by phone from Barzeh.
NBC News staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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