DAMASCUS, Syria, July 18 (UPI) -- A suicide blast in Damascus Wednesday killed the country's defense minister and President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law, state television and activists said.
State television said Defense Minister Dawood Rajiha and Asef Shawkat, Assad's brother-in-law who was deputy chief of staff of the Syrian military, were killed when the suicide bomber attacked a building during a meeting of a group of senior ministers and security chiefs established to develop countermeasures to the 16-month uprising, The New York Times reported.
State media denied reports by activists the Interior Minister Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar also died, saying he was alive and in a stable condition.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said all members of the crisis group were either dead or injured, but the Times said there was no official confirmation of that account.
The official Syrian Arab News Agency described the assault as a "suicide terrorist attack" while opponents called it a major victory. Analysts told the Times the incident marked a turning point in the crisis.
"The Syrian regime has started to collapse," the activist who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory told the Times. "There was fighting for three days inside Damascus, it was not just a gun battle, and now someone has killed or injured all these important people."
In Damascus, speculation surfaced that the bomber was a minister's bodyguard, but the Times said there was no confirmation of the reports.
"If a bodyguard blew himself up, then there [was] a major internal security breach," Elias Hanna, a former Lebanese military chief and military analyst, told the Times. "Who will replace these people? They are irreplaceable at this stage; it's hard to find loyal people now that doubt is sowed everywhere."
"Everyone, even those close to the inner circle, will now be under suspicion," he said.
Because of the confusion and the lack of an official tally of the dead and wounded, conflicting reports about who was killed and who survived were circulating, the Times said.
Elsewhere, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria said regime forces "have intensified the shelling by using helicopter gunships, artillery and mortars" in Homs.
At least 15 people had been killed across the country by midday local time, activists said.
Israeli intelligence indicated Assad was shifting troops into Damascus from Syria's border with the disputed Golan Heights held by Israel, the Times said.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council could vote Wednesday on whether to extend the mission of 300 U.N. monitors on the ground in Syria as a Friday deadline looms. The mission's work has been largely suspended because of surging violence since April, when U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan brokered a peace plan that included monitoring of a cease-fire.
The U.N. Security Council has two draft resolutions on the Syrian crisis before it. One threatens sanctions against Assad's regime if government forces don't stop attacks and also calls for renewing the U.N. observer mission for 45 days. Russia, a permanent Security Council member, has threatened to veto the measure.
Russia has opposed efforts seeking to blame, punish or change the Syrian government. Russia and China, trading partners with Syria, vetoed two other resolutions in the U.N. Security Council.
Russia has offered a draft resolution that "strongly urges all parties in Syria to cease immediately all armed violence in all its forms," CNN said. The Russian draft calls for renewing the observer mission for three months.
Two Syrian generals were among hundreds of refugees who crossed from Syria into Turkey overnight, bringing the total number of defecting generals to 20, the BBC reported.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights and the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies said in its Tuesday report on rights violations several children were unable to receive proper care after they were injured by "indiscriminate bombardment carried out by the Syrian army."
The report said several Damascus neighborhoods and other villages were heavily damaged after being attacked by tanks and other weapons.
The United Nations estimates more than 10,000 people have been killed in the violence since the crisis began; opposition activists say more than 15,000 have died.
Source : UPI
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