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Israel denies involvement after mystery car bomb kills 17 civilians in Damascus By Haaretz Correspondent and AP , By Yoav Stern A car bomb exploded Saturday near a complex housing Syrian security offices in Damascus, killing 17 people and wounding more than a dozen in the deadliest attack in the tightly controlled country in decades. Despite claims from Syrian groups that Israel was behind the bombing, political and security officials in Jerusalem denied any Israeli involvement. The brazen bombing raises questions over the Syrian government's normally strong grip on security as the country tries to emerge from international isolation. The explosion came only hours after Syria's foreign minister held a rare meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in New York. Advertisement State-run television said that a car packed with 200 kilograms of explosives blew up on a highway in a southern neighborhood shattering dozens of car and apartment windows. The charred booby-trapped car was seen sitting in the street near a primary school. The explosion knocked down part of a four meter high wall surrounding a security complex that houses several buildings in the Sidi Kadad area. Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majid called the bombing a terrorist act and said all the victims were civilians. Anti-terror units were investigating, but officials provided no other details. Such deadly bombings are rare in Syria, a tightly controlled country where the government uses heavy-handed tactics to crack down against dissent and instability. But the country is also home to Palestinian militants, and is close ally of the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. The U.S. accuses Syria of being a state sponsor of terrorism and allowing Muslim militants to use its territory to cross into Iraq to carry out attacks against U.S. and Iraqi force. Syria says it has an interest in fighting Islamic extremist groups like Al-Qaida, and secular regime of President Bashar Assad has been battling Muslim militants blamed for a string of smaller bombings and attacks against the government and diplomatic missions in recent years. In September 2006, Islamic militants tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus in an unusually bold attack in which three assailants and a Syrian guard were killed. Three months earlier, a battle between Syrian security forces and militants near the Defense Ministry left four militants and a police officer dead. Officials blamed these attacks on Jund al-Sham, which means Soldiers of Syria, an Al-Qaida offshoot that was established in Afghanistan. Militants often denounce Assad's secular regime and have at times called for its overthrow. Though Syria has long been viewed by the U.S. as a destabilizing country in the Mideast, in recent months, Damascus has been trying to change its image and end years of global seclusion. Assad has pursued indirect peace talks with Israel, mediated by Turkey, and says he wants direct talks next year. Syria also has agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon, a country it used to dominate both politically and militarily, and has worked harder at stemming the flow of militants into Iraq. A political analyst with Lebanon's leading An-Nahar newspaper said the bombing is the result of a tacit confrontation between the Syrian government and Al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants after Damascus tightened its long desert border with Iraq. For months, the Syrians have been preparing to face such attacks after they decided to stop militants from crossing its border into Iraq, said Ibrahim Bayram, whose newspaper often takes an anti-Syrian line. Saturday's bombing was the deadliest in more than decade. On New Year's Eve in 1997, a bomb went off aboard a public bus in Damascus, killing 12 people and wounding dozens. Syria accused longtime enemy Israel of being behind the blast, though Israel denied the charge. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem described Saturday's bombing as a terrorist act but denied that it was a security breach. "I hope that you will be sure that security (forces) in Syria will always be awake and watching over the citizens," Muallem told Al-Arabiya satellite TV in an interview from New York where he was attending the UN General Assembly meeting. The explosion occurred near the junction to the road going to Damascus' airport and an intersection that leads to Sayeda Zeinab, a holy shrine for Shiite Muslims frequently visited by Iranian and Iraqi pilgrims about eight kilometers away from the bombing site. The last major explosion to strike Damascus was in February when a car bomb killed the commander of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, Imad Mughniyeh. Hezbollah and its top ally, Iran, blamed Israel for the assassination, but Israel denied any involvement. Last month, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman, a senior military officer close to Assad, also was assassinated by a sniper on a yacht at a beach resort in the northern port city of Tartous. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Defending against Iran U.S. deploys early-warning radar system at Israeli base to detect Iranian missiles. Chinese train in Israel Haifa stadium had been turned into mock Bird's Nest in pre-Olympics exercises.

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