SYRIA/ Waqqaf: I’ll tell you why Al Qaeda’s suicide bombers continue to strike

Ammar Waqqaf, Syrian political analyst, member of the Syrian Social Club and BBC commentator, tells about the suicide bomb in Damascus, who is really behind it and what they are hoping to achieve, in an exclusive interview with ilsussidiario.net. It is a live testimonial, seeing as Waqqaf was less than a kilometer and a half from the site of the attack that resulted in at least 25 dead and 46 wounded when it happened. From the anguish of the families of the victims, who crowded around the entrance to the hospital for news of their loved ones, to the inhabitants of Damascus who, after the attack, barricaded themselves in their homes, the eye-witness describes to us what happened in the Syrian capital.

What is the situation like in Damascus after the attack?
On the day of the attack, from two onwards, the citizens of the capital were barricaded in their homes, except for a small crowd of visibly angry people gathered around the explosion. The attack broke the calm of the city on the holy day of Friday. When it happened, I was less than a kilometer and a half from the scene of the explosion. I went by the hospital, where they had taken some of the wounded and the bodies of the victims. Their families were gathering at the entrance, trying desperately to get news about their loved ones.

Are Assad's intelligence services or the rebels behind the attacks?
Only two weeks ago, in Damascus, two other large explosions occurred, and the opposition stated that they were the responsibility of the government. No one remembered the fact that, less than 24 hours before, there had been similar explosions in Baghdad. The "fingerprints" on these attacks are the same, and in both cases attributable to Al Qaeda. The Syrian opposition is not a single group, as some would represent it, but a composite which includes liberals and human rights activists, but also Islamic extremists and Salafists who have no qualms about killing the greatest number of people in order to unleash a civil war. Obviously, neither the opposition National Council nor the Syrian Free Army were the ones who struck in Damascus, but it was fragments of the larger rebel universe who had escaped their control.

Why are you excluding the possibility that the government might be responsible?