Word: damascus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...findings at the Syrian site have yet to be declared in any official IAEA documentation, but whatever the conclusion of the IAEA's investigation, the deepening suspicions toward the Assad regime are coming at an increasingly complicated moment in relations between Damascus and Washington. Late last month, U.S. special forces launched a raid into eastern Syria targeting an alleged al-Qaeda weapons smuggler. In response, the Syrian government shut down an American school and cultural center in Damascus, and forced American Fulbright scholars based at Syrian institutions to leave the country. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that...
...sudden uptick in tension comes at a moment when Syria had begun to appear as one of the bright spots in a troubled region. U.S. officials had acknowledged that Syria had begun to stem the flow of insurgents into Iraq, while last spring, Damascus revealed that it had been holding indirect peace talks with Israel. President Assad, moreover, had said peace in the Middle East was possible within two years, if only the U.S. would sponsor direct talks, and hopes were high that the incoming Obama Administration would do just that...
...busy Salah Eddin Street, Arab opinion is sharply divided. Says Ahmed Ali, a teacher: "Of course I'll boycott, because Israelis annexed the city by force." But as Ahmed Fawzi, a grocer beside Damascus Gate, says, "The only way to get something from Israel is to fight them from within, joining them. We should go to the municipality and scream and spit in their faces, if that's what it takes...
...bombed a site in northeast Syria suspected of being a nuclear facility. Syria has also been shaken by attacks from within its borders. In February, Imad Mughniyah, posthumously identified as the top military commander of Lebanon's militant Shi'ite Hizballah, was assassinated in a car-bomb explosion in Damascus. Last month, a rare car bomb exploded in the Syrian capital, killing 28 people...
That car-bombing was blamed on jihadists. It was followed by a gun battle in a Palestinian refugee camp outside Damascus in which a number of militants were killed and arrested. Syrian troops have also deployed along the northern border of neighboring Lebanon in what Damascus says is an attempt to block jihadists from slipping into Syria. These recent developments have raised speculation that Syria is threatened by a blowback from jihadist militants who no longer have easy access to cross the border into Iraq and instead are turning their attention to the secular regime in Damascus. "We assumed...