Tragedy avoided, suicide bomber plan foiled in Syria

A suicide bomber in Aleppo was killed by security forces after he was discovered driving a stolen minibus filled with five large explosive canisters.

He was killed before he was able to detonate them according to state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.

The driver’s target was Aleppo’s densely populated Al Shaar Neighbourhood. If successful, this would have taken place just a day after at least 55 people were killed in Damascus by two other suicide bombers.

These events have given Syrian officials reason to justify assumptions that President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies are foreign-backed terrorists.

On the other hand, officials from the opposition said that the government was using scare-tactics on its own people.

According to experts, however, there has been increasing evidence to suggest that a number of fighters from neighbouring countries, possible sent by Al Qaeda in Iraq, are joining the fight in Syria.

This could cause further difficulty for the United Nations and Arab League in their attempts at sustaining a cease-fire in the turbulent country.  

Nearly half of the planned total of 300 peace monitors to be sent by the UN are currently on Syrian ground and the chief of UN spokesperson, Martin Nesirky denied suggestions that the cease-fire was failing saying it was never expected to be an easy task but the plan was fully backed by the international community.