May 10, 2012: Suicide bombers hit military intelligence in Damascus

DAMASCUS, SYRIA – That the Assad regimes in Syria have been brutal is a well-known fact: that those same regimes have been targeted by terrorists is therefore not a mystery.

World history is replete with brutal despots. Adolf Hitler. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. The list, unfortunately, goes on and on and on.

And if you thought that this was merely a recent phenomenon. Think again. Before modernity with its newfangled ideas like ‘democracy‘ you were more likely to be ruled by a cruel man (rarely a woman), enjoyed no rights, and would likely die from disease or in a violent manner. Or be governed by a nut-job like Nero.

Sometimes autocracy spans generations. Syria is a case in point. Hafez al Assad ran the country with an iron fist for three decades (1971-2000) and was succeeded upon his death by his son Basher. The latter, a doctor who became president only once his older and more favoured brother Basil died in a car accident in 1994, is very much his father’s child. Syria has been embroiled in civil war since the Arab Spring of 2011. And the deaths keep climbing.

It is of no surprise, then, that terrorists have targeted the regime as well.

On this day in 2012

Two suicide bombers detonated two car bombs outside a military intelligence building in Damascus, killing 55 and wounding more than 400. The Islamist terrorist group Jabhat al Nusra was believed to have been behind the atrocity.

Two booby-trapped cars loaded with more than 1,000kg of explosives and driven by suicide bombers carried out the terrorist blasts. 

Official Syrian government statement

Then UK foreign secretary William Hague also condemned the blasts and added: “Yet again it is the people of Syria who are suffering as a result of the repression and violence, which must come to an end.” Too true, sir, too true.

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