Brahimi urges truce as bomb rocks Damascus

DAMASCUS (AFP) ― Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday met President Bashar al-Assad and later appealed to both sides in Syria’s conflict to cease fire for a Muslim holiday this week, even as a deadly blast rocked the country’s capital.

Thousands of people, meanwhile, took part in a demonstration against the Syrian regime at the Beirut funeral of a top Lebanese police intelligence chief killed in a car bombing which Lebanon’s opposition has blamed on Damascus.

In Syria’s capital, a bomb exploded outside a police station in a Christian quarter of the Old City, killing 13 people, the state news agency SANA reported, blaming rebels.

It was the first such attack against a Christian quarter since the uprising against Assad’s regime erupted 19 months ago. “The blast was so strong that my house, a mile away, shook,” one resident said.

Many Syrian Christians ― who account for just five percent of the mostly Sunni Muslim population ― have sided with the regime, fearing that the uprising could trigger an Islamist backlash on their community.

The bombing came as U.N.-Arab League envoy Brahimi called for “unilateral” cease-fires by the regime and the rebels for the Eid al-Adha holiday, or Feast of Sacrifice, that starts on Friday.

“I appeal to everyone to take a unilateral decision to cease hostilities on the occasion of Eid al-Adha and that this truce be respected from today or tomorrow,” he said, stressing that the ceasefire call was his personal initiative.

“This is a call to every Syrian, on the street, in the village, fighting in the regular army and its opponents, for them to take a unilateral decision to stop hostilities.”

Brahimi said he had contacted political opposition leaders inside and outside Syria and armed groups in the country. “We found them to be very favorable” to the idea of a truce, he said, in a cautious note of optimism.