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Attack on Damascus rocks Assad 'fortress'

Reuters, Beirut
An audacious and deadly attack on President Bashar al-Assad's security cabinet is a major psychological and strategic setback that exposes a weakened Syrian establishment unable to protect its innermost centres of power.
The damage is compounded by Assad's failure to
ple", said Middle East columnist Rami Khouri. "This is a regime on its last legs".
The strike at the centre of power will further embolden the opposition, which has already taken its fight to the streets of central Damascus, vowing to liberate the capital from four decades of autocratic
in speak in public to rally his forces. State television only showed footage of him swearing in his new defence minister, the first images of the president since the bomb attack. Assad’s younger brother Maher al-Assad, commander of the army's elite units, has however remained out of sight.
Maher is the strongman of the Assad clan, but its strategic brain, the president's brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, was assassinated along with at least two other security chiefs in Wednesday's bomb attack that killed half of the government's six-member crisis council.
"The fortress of Damascus is no longer a fortress", said Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the London School of Economics. "Psychologically this is a shattering blow to both Assad and his supporters".
"It must make Assad and everyone at the top unsure how safe they are from their own peo-
Assad family rule.
Scenes of armed rebels from the Syrian Free Army pushing back regular army troops and torching police stations in the capital were unthinkable just a few days ago. They represent a point of no return for many in the armed forces, from which more soldiers have defected since the bomb attack.
The blast not only wiped out important elements of Assad's inner circle but sent an unmistakable message to the president and his loyalists: They are no longer immune or invincible and the tipping point is getting closer.
Analysts say the spectacular attack would probably also trigger more defections of senior Sunni army officers and loyalists who feel they can no longer trust a leadership unable to protect itself or its people.
The aftermath of Wednesday's attack suggests a government in disarray. Assad's silence speaks volumes.