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July 18, 2012 - The situation in Syria is rapidly deteriorating, according to media reports. At meeting in three-story building in Rawda, near President Assad’s home, a brazen bombing killed top government officials, including the defense minster, and the brother-in-law of the President, Bashar al-Assad. Several other people very close to the President are also believed to be seriously wounded.
The Syrian Defense Minister Daoud Rajiha, a Christian, had held his post for less than a year. The loss of Assef Shawkat, the president’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Bushra, is a far more debilitating blow to Damascus, according to analysts. Gen Shawkat was not only the mastermind of the crackdown against the rebels, but the man who oversaw it.
It is also reported that Hisham Ikhtiar, the director Syria’s national security chief, and Interior Minister Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar, were among those critically injured, and may have died in the attack.
World powers are concerned that a sudden collapse of the regime could trigger an escalation of sectarian slaughter in Syria, which is run by the minority Alawite sect, and which in turn is supported by many well armed minority groups that have traditionally sided with the regime – Christians, Druze, and Kurds. 70 percent of Syria's 26 million people are Sunni, and many fear sectarian slaughter if the Syrian state were to collapse.
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