Four killed in attack on US mission in Damascus

SYRIA: Four men armed with automatic rifles and grenades yesterday attempted to storm the US embassy compound in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus but were scared off by Syrian security guards.

The guards also prevented a white van packed with gas bottles rigged with pipe bombs from crashing through the gate in the high wall and detonating.

Three of the attackers and one security man were killed in the shootout and one gunman was captured.

According to the Syrian news agency, 14 people were injured, including a police officer, two Iraqis and seven people employed at a nearby workshop.

No US nationals were harmed, but a Chinese diplomat who was watching the assault from the roof of the nearby Chinese mission was slightly wounded by shrapnel.

Syria's interior minister, Bassan Abdel Majid, called the attack, the first ever on a US mission in Damascus, a "terrorist operation" and said the surviving gunman may reveal the identity of the group and its motivation. Witnesses said the men called out "Allah Akbar! (God is Great)" as they threw grenades into the compound.

Analysts suspect the operation was mounted by elements inspired by al-Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th five years ago.

On Monday, the movement's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned that fresh attacks could be expected in the Gulf states and Israel. The last bombing against a US mission was in March 2006 in Pakistan.

Syria, an authoritarian state where the intelligence services maintain a tight grip on security, has experienced a series of violent incidents over the past three years. Lebanese and Iraqi infiltrators have been blamed.

In June, four militants and a guard died during an attack near the studios of state-run television. In April 2004 four people were killed when bombers attempted to blow up a vehicle near the Canadian embassy.

Damascus has long suppressed organised Muslim militancy. During the late 1970s and early 1980s Syria suffered a series of violent attacks perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, an offshoot of the Egyptian parent movement.

In 1982 the Syrian army crushed the brotherhood and ended its campaign to overthrow the secular Baathist regime.

Although in recent years many Syrians have turned to Islam, religious politics remain banned. The brotherhood's exiled leaders recently formed an opposition alliance with former vice-president Abdel Halim Khaddam, who left Damascus in 2005, and US-based opposition factions recently cultivated by Washington.

Relations between Syria and the US have been strained since the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq al-Hariri in 2004 when the US ambassador in Damascus was recalled.

Tensions were exacerbated by the backing the Bush administration gave to Israel during its 34-day offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon and are not likely to be improved by the protection accorded the embassy compound by Syrian security guards.