Beirut // Hardline Syrian rebel factions on Thursday issued rare denials of involvement over deadly twin suicide attacks in Damascus a day earlier, with some groups alleging the Bashar Al Assad regime was responsible.
Tahrir Al Sham, an alliance of rebel groups dominated by Al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, said it “denies any link to the Damascus explosions”.
“Our goals are confined to security branches and military barracks of the criminal regime and its allies,” it said on the messaging service Telegram.
Fatah Al Sham had earlier claimed responsibility for twin bombings that killed 74 people in Damascus on Saturday, most of them Iraqi pilgrims visiting Shiite shrines in the Syrian capital. It also claimed to have carried out bombings that killed 42 people in Syria’s third city Homs last month.
Wednesday’s attacks targeted a Damascus courthouse, where 32 people were killed and 100 wounded, and a restaurant in the west of the capital, where 25 people were wounded.
There has been no claim of responsibility.
The Ahrar Al Sham group described Wednesday’s attacks as “criminal terrorist blasts” and accused the government of provocation, an allegation also levelled by another hardline rebel group, Jaish Al Islam, which said the attacks had been “staged”.
“The regime of Assad achieved two central goals: tarnishing the revolution with the stain of terrorism ... and creating sectarian tensions within a united people,” Jaish Al Islam said.
The attacks came as the United Nations prepares to convene a new round of peace negotiations between the government and the opposition in Geneva next Thursday. The UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said the bombings, which coincided with the sixth anniversary of Syria’s civil war, were an attempt to derail the talks.
Rebel delegates this week stayed away from the latest round of parallel talks which wrapped up in the Kazakh capital Astana on Wednesday. Those talks are supported by Assad ally Russia and Turkey, which has backed rebel groups in their attempt to oust the Syrian president.
The civil war has killed about 400,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population of about 22 million.
* Agence France-Presse
