… we just won’t know what yet for a while: Blasts Rock Syrian Capital.
AMMAN, Jordan, April 27 — Explosions and gunfire broke out in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus, the Syrian capital, Tuesday night in what officials described as a confrontation between security forces and a group of unidentified attackers.
Witnesses said more than a dozen blasts sounded soon after nightfall in the Mazza neighborhood of western Damascus, home to a number of embassies and a former U.N. building that might have been the prime target. Syrian security officials immediately sealed the area around the Canadian and Iranian embassies, as well as the residence of the British ambassador, where the clash involving grenades and rifle fire played out over most of an hour.
Take your pick on the players and reasons: there are at least six* groups out there that probably wouldn’t mind too much taking a deniable swing at the Syrians, assuming that the whole thing isn’t a put-up job in the first place. Or an internal-faction fight. Or just a distorted version of what actually happened. And so on, and so on, and so on…
Moe
*Not excluding the US.
You left out several plausible possibilities such as “staged” and “inter-Arab.” (I suppose you could squeeze those under “internal,” but I’d reserve “internal” to describe “internal to factions in the Syrian government.”
I’d look first to the most traditional foe of the regime, the Muslim Brotherhood. Hama, anyone?
On other fronts,by the way, as I’ve blogged, Specter won. (Barring recount and errors.)
Good show for the fine minds at NRO. Nothing like wishful thinking to make for accurate reporting.
“You left out several plausible possibilities such as “staged” and “inter-Arab.””
I understand your reservations of distinguishing ‘inter-Arab’ from ‘internal’, but I think that I’m using ‘put-up job’ where you’d use ‘staged’.
“…I think that I’m using ‘put-up job’ where you’d use ‘staged’.”
Ah. Fair enough.
…Specter won.
Lacking context (as well as being a liter or so shy of a full tank of caffeine) I just had an Ian Fleming flashback.
how about Thailand? Yowzers.
And what’s up with this drug thing? Didn’t we hear that the insurgents in Fallujah were a bunch of drug addicts, too?
Me too Slarti….
So, word here is that it was al Queda.