Besieged Syrian Leader Makes Rare Public Appearance
Photo Credit: APPresident Bashar al-Assad of Syria, apparently seeking to counter the impression of a leader in hiding after consecutive days of suspected insurgent bombings in his power base, Damascus, made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, visiting workers at an electric station.
Syrian state television and the official SANA news agency said that Mr. Assad mingled with workers at the Umayyad Electrical Station and congratulated them on the occasion of international Labor Day. Photographs showed Mr. Assad dressed in a dark suit as workers showed him the station.
“They want us to be afraid,” Mr. Assad said in one television clip. “Well, we won’t be afraid.” As he spoke, loyalists in the background chanted, “May God protect you.”
Mr. Assad, whose government is fighting an increasingly violent insurgency that grew out of his repression of peaceful political protests more than two years ago, is not often seen outside his heavily guarded presidential palace these days. His appearance followed an assassination attempt in the form of a car bombing on Monday aimed at his prime minister and a bombing on Tuesday that killed at least 13 people outside a former Interior Ministry building. The attacks were carried out in the heart of Damascus, the capital, which has remained basically under the control of Mr. Assad’s loyalist forces.
His visit to the power station coincided with a new set of explosions in central Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain but with a reporting network in Syria, said that rockets hit the neighborhood of Bab Mesalla, an area of shops and a transportation hub, and that a bomb detonated near the police headquarters on nearby Khalid bin Walid Street, a site of previous bomb attacks. SANA later confirmed the attacks, saying at least two people were killed and 28 were wounded. It attributed the attacks to terrorists, the Assad government’s blanket description for armed opponents.
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