BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad performed Eid prayers in a Damascus mosque on Sunday, state television showed, in his first appearance in public since a July bombing in the Syrian capital that killed four top security officials.
Assad, who is battling a 17-month-old uprising, was accompanied by his prime minister but not his vice president, Farouk al-Shara, whose reported defection was denied by the government the previous day. In the state TV footage, Assad was sitting cross-legged during a sermon in which Syria was described as the victim of a conspiracy hatched by the United States, Israel, the West and Arab states but which would not “defeat our Islam, our ideology and our determination in Syria”.
The July 18 bombing at the state security headquarters in Damascus was a stunning blow to Assad, who lost a brother-in-law in the attack, and fighting subsequently intensified with rebels making inroads into Damascus and the commercial hub Aleppo. Syrian authorities on Saturday dismissed reports that Shara had defected as Assad’s forces pursued an offensive against rebels, bombarding parts of Aleppo in the north and attacking an insurgent-held town in the oil-producing east. Shara “never thought for a moment about leaving the country”, said a statement from his office broadcast on state television in response to reports that the veteran Baath Party loyalist had tried to bolt to Jordan.
Assad, battling a spreading rebellion led by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, has been abandoned by a number of senior officials, including prime minister Riyadh Hijab two weeks ago. (Reuters)
