Five Nuclear Engineers Murdered in Syria

Written by: “M”

According to the AFP, (Agence France-Presse) a global news agency, five nuclear engineers were brutally shot and murdered by unknown assailants on Sunday while they were traveling by bus just north of Damascus near the research center where they worked, an informant said on Monday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, near Damascus, relies on a network of sources on the ground field sources for its news reports. The observatory later informed AFP that four out of five of the nuclear engineers were Syrian, while the latter was Iranian.

“The unidentified attackers murdered five nuclear energy engineers who worked in the scientific research center near the neighborhood of Barzeh, northern Damascus,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. He also said: “Four of the nuclear engineers were Syrian while one was Iranian. Their bus was ambushed while they were on their way to the research center. Their assailants shot them dead.” 

There has been no information on why the attack was conducted, however some say that the recent attack was connected to another planned assault that happened in July last year, six people who worked at the same research center were killed in a mortar attack carried out by rebels seeking President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. Another military research center, also near Damascus, was also hit by a deadly Israeli raid in May 2013.

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Sources:

(Presse, Agence France. “Five Nuclear Engineers Murdered near Damascus.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 9 Nov. 2014. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. <http://news.yahoo.com/five-nuclear-engineers-murdered-near-damascus-225907276.html?soc_src=copy>.)