"...On Sunday evening the pattern of Alawite assassinations diverged when Sariya Hassoun, the son of Syria's Grand Mufti, was shot during an ambush, ...
Their deaths bring the number of what activists and the government both say are targeted assassinations to at least six in the past week, mostly in the central city of Homs, Syria's third-largest city and a center of protests. In recent months, Homs was also home to a spate of sectarian killings between Alawites and Sunnis...
'Wake up& smell the coffee, Your Excellency!'
During a sermon Tuesday at his son's funeral that was aired on state TV, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun accused the opposition of creating the climate for his son's killing and blamed rival, anti-Assad Sunni clerics for allegedly issuing fatwas, or religious edicts, inciting against him....The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based activist group, blamed Mr. Hassoun's death on "insurgents."Some opposition activists said the killing of a prominent Sunni punctuated the argument that some of the mostly Sunni protesters were on a sect-based killing spree. But the acts could also be seen to reflect rogue activists carrying out revenge killings on any sect. "The goal is…to pit people against each other," ...Mahmoud Akam, a leading Sunni cleric in Aleppo, said in an interview, protesters in Syria had turned violent despite what appeared to be orders from their leadership to remain peaceful...The victims were mainly professionals—a medical doctor, an engineer, professors and a student, echoing a wave of assassinations in Syria starting in 1979, before the government engaged in years of fighting with an Islamist insurgency led by the Muslim Brotherhood. ..."
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