AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — A car bomb ripped through Syria’s largest city of Aleppo on Sunday, killing at least 17 people and wounding 40 in one of the main battlegrounds of the country’s civil war, state-run media said.
Al-Qaida-style bombings have become increasingly common in Syria, and Western officials say there is little doubt that Islamist extremists, some associated with the terror network, have made inroads in the country as instability has spread. But the main fighting force looking to oust President Bashar Assad is the Free Syrian Army, a group made up largely of defected Syrian soldiers.
Sunday’s blast came hours after a Jordanian militant leader linked to al-Qaida warned that his extremist group will launch “deadly attacks” to help the rebels in Syria topple Assad.
In a speech delivered to a crowd of nearly 200 followers protesting outside the prime minister’s office in Amman, Mohammad al-Shalabi, better known as Abu Sayyaf, told Assad that “our fighters are coming to get you.”
The warning fueled concern that Syria’s civil war is providing a new forum for foreign jihadists, who fought alongside Iraqi Sunni insurgents after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are sending fighters to help the Taliban in Afghanistan.
A Jordan-based Western diplomat who monitors Syria from his base in Jordan said the number of foreign fighters is about 100 but that figure is gradually rising. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying identifying him further could risk his ability to gather information on Syria.
“From this podium, we declare jihad (holy war) against the wicked Assad, who is shedding the blood of our Sunni Muslim brothers in Syria,” Abu Sayyaf yelled through a loudspeaker.
Abu Sayyaf is the head of Jordan’s Salafi Jihadi group, which was blamed for the 2002 assassination of U.S. aid worker Laurence Foley outside his Amman home. He himself was convicted in 2004 of plotting attacks on Jordanian air bases hosting American trainers but served his term and was released last year.
The Syrian conflict has its roots in mostly peaceful street protests that started in March last year. Since then, it has expanded into a civil war, with 23,000 people killed so far, according to human rights activists.
French officials have acknowledged providing communications and other non-lethal equipment to Syrian rebel forces, but say they won’t provide weapons without international agreement. France played a leading role in the international campaign against Libya’s dictator Moammar Gadhafi last year.
Makdessi reaffirmed that Syria is “fully committed to cooperating with Brahimi,” adding that “the only way to make Brahimi’s mission a success is the cooperation of all parties to enable him to bring about calmness and then the political process.”
In Iran, a Foreign Ministry official said that Brahimi would visit Iran as part of efforts to revive a peace effort, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency. It quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Eraghchi as saying Brahimi will visit Tehran at an “appropriate time” but gave no other details.
Back in Syria, activists also reported clashes between government forces and rebels in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, in the central city of Homs, in the northern city of Idlib, in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour and the restive southern town of Daraa bordering Jordan.
The Observatory said the heaviest fighting was in Homs, where 17 people had been killed.
- Jamal Halaby, Associated Press