DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The Syrian president vowed on Friday to rid the country of Muslim extremists whom he blamed for a suicide blast the previous evening that killed dozens of people, including a top Sunni preacher who was a staunch supporter of Bashar Assad.
And in a warning to rebels battling to topple his regime, the Syrian leader pledged that his troops will "wipe out" and clean the country of the "forces of darkness."Assad's statement came as the Syrian Health Ministry raised the death toll from the Thursday night bombing in Damascus to 49, after seven of the wounded died overnight in hospital.In the attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in the heart of the Syrian capital, killing Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti as he was giving a sermon. The blast also wounded 84 people.In the statement carried by Syria's state SUNA news agency, Assad said al-Buti represented true Islam in facing "the forces of darkness and extremist" ideology."Your blood and your grandson's, as well as that of all the nation's martyrs will not go in vain because we will continue to follow your thinking to wipe out their darkness and clear our country of them," said Assad.
i hate to sound cold, but with our own problems and those pending and recent commitment to Israel we really can't do this again especially to the military.
i think we need to hang up the six shooters and support their local sheriffs. we don't IMO have some sort of devine appointment to be the global police, especially when we can't seem to take care of home.
involvement in foreign countries boost the deficit by billions and the only advantage goes to the rich and the war mongering right wing.
Al-Buti was the most senior religious figure to be killed in Syria's civil war and his slaying was a major blow to Assad. The preacher had been a vocal supporter of the regime since the early days of Assad's father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad, providing a Sunni cover and legitimacy to their rule. Sunnis are the majority sect in Syria while Assad is from the minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam.In a speech earlier this month, al-Buti had said it was "a religious duty to protect the values, the land and the nation" of Syria. "There is no difference between the army and the rest of the nation," he said at the time — a clear endorsement of Assad's forces in their effort to crush the rebels.
we are supporting the rebels, how far are we going to go and will it be another obituary overload, and more to the deficit? religious wars are not like war were you fight or die or go to jail if you don't. these people are committed like Japan's Kamikaze's. our troops could never be that involved in someone else crusade we can't handle our own.
