The governor of the Hama province in central Syria was assassinated on Sunday in a car bombing, regime television reported while according the blame on opposition fighters, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Terrorists assassinated Anas Abdel Razzaq al-Naem, the Hama governor, in a car bomb attack in the Jarajma district of Hama,” AFP quoted state television as saying.
Al-Naem was head of the ruling Baath party in Hama. He also worked as professor of the medical college of AL-Baath University in the Homs province, he later become the head of the doctors’ union’s branch in Hama.
He was appointed by President Bashar al-Assad in July 2011, four months after the beginning of the revolt against the government.
The previous governor Ahmed Abdulaziz was sacked when 500,000 people took to the streets in Hama to protest against the Syrian government.
While state television said people were killed and others were injured, it did not provide a death toll figure.
The blast comes after another car bomb attack reportedly exploded late Saturday in the capital’s Christian-dominated Burj al-Rous district.
Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez al-Assad suppressed a Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama in 1982, killing between 10,000 and 40,000 people.
In a related story, the rebel military council in Damascus said about 15 fighters from the Shiite Lebanese movement, Hezbollah, were killed after clashes with the rebel Free Syrian Army near the highly revered Shiite shrine of Al-Sayyeda Zeinab in the southern suburbs of the capital.
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