Smoke billowed from the Syrian village of Jbatha Al-khashab in the Golan Heights region, as seen from Israel on Thursday.
The bombing, close to Mr. Assad’s own residence, called into question
the ability of a government that depends on an insular group of
loyalists to function effectively as it battles a strengthening
opposition. In a move to dispel any rumors that he had been injured or
had left the capital, Mr. Assad appeared on state television on Thursday
swearing in a new defense minister in what appeared to be a reception
room at the presidential palace. The images were broadcast in a
continuous loop on SANA.
The outlook for a peaceful outcome to the conflict darkened further on
Thursday, when Russia and China vetoed a Britain-sponsored resolution at
the United Nations Security Council that would have penalized Mr.
Assad’s government with sanctions for the first time for failing to
implement the six-point peace plan negotiated by Kofi Annan, the special
Syria envoy. The double veto also called into question the viability of
a 300-member United Nations mission sent to Syria to monitor the peace
plan. Its mandate expires Friday.
Opposition activists reported battles between the Army and opposition
forces in the southern district of Damascus and in the northern suburb
of Qaboun, with residents who were not trapped by fighting fleeing many
areas. In a second statement in two days, the Syrian military said on
Thursday that the bombing had left it more determined to “clear the
homeland of the armed terrorist groups” — the term it uses for the
insurgents seeking Mr. Assad’s ouster.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said that the
government assault had intensified, with more helicopters firing
rockets that were igniting and destroying houses in Qaboun. It said that
snipers were deployed around the exits of the neighborhood and that
water and electricity had been cut off with numerous families trapped
and no one able to excavate dead bodies from the rubble.
One activist reached in Damascus, using only the name Omar, said that
the government had been asking residents of Tadamon and parts of
Yarmouk, the capital’s southern neighborhoods, to leave their homes.
That is usually a sign that government forces are on the verge of a
violent attack.
Residents of Mezze and Kafr Sousseh, western neighborhoods even closer
to the center of the city, fled unprompted because of the intensity of
the shelling there, activists said.
Another activist, Ali Salem, said residents of some five districts of
the southern districts of the capital had been warned to leave and those
neighborhoods were largely empty. “They threatened them and gave them
24 hours to leave their homes or they will be shelled,” he said.
At least some of the Assad family has left Damascus. One opposition
figure said a person associated with air force intelligence told him
that a plane left Mezze military airfield in Damascus on Wednesday
afternoon for Latakia carrying Mr. Assad’s mother, Anisa al-Assad, the
widow of the former president Hafez al-Assad; his wife, Asma, and their
three children, and other women and children from the family.
It is possible the family is gathering for a ceremony at the family
mausoleum in Qardaha, above Latakia, to bury Asef Shawkat, the most
significant of those who died in the attack on Wednesday.
Mr. Shawkat, the former deputy chief of staff of the military and the
husband of the president’s older sister, Bushra, was killed along with
Defense Minister Dawoud A. Rajha, the most prominent Christian in the
government, and Maj. Gen. Hassan Turkmani, a previous defense minister
serving as the top military aide to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa.
The strike dealt a potent blow to the government, as much for where it
took place as for the individuals who were targeted: the very cabinet
ministers and intelligence chiefs who have coordinated the government’s
iron-fisted approach to the uprising.
The battle for the capital, the center of Assad family power, appears to have begun.
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