Explosions and Gun Battles Rock Syrian Capital

A succession of explosions and gunfire rocked Damascus last night as a band of armed militants opened fire on targets in a district where foreign diplomats, including the British ambassador, live and work.

Security forces fought running battles for more than an hour with the assailants in the upmarket Mazze district to the west of the city centre.

Some devices detonated close to the Iranian and Canadian embassies and not far from the British ambassador's residence. Diplomatic sources said a UN building in Damascus had been set alight and three vehicles destroyed.

But UN officials in New York said all its staff and facilities were intact, and that the targeted building was an old UN office block vacated years ago.

"A subversive armed group opened fire at random this evening in the Mazze area and was confronted by the relevant security apparatus," a Syrian security official said according to the state news agency Sana.

The official said that four gunmen detonated a bomb placed under a car, which damaged an empty building, before Syrian security forces surrounded the group and exchanged gunfire.

The gunmen tried to flee in another car while hurling hand grenades at security forces. As a result of the exchanges, two of the attackers were killed, along with a policemen and a woman who was in the area.

Security forces sealed off the area and overpowered the militants. The official's statement described the violence as a "terrorist incident", which the government condemned, and blamed regional troubles for instigating the attack.

"The security and political unrest and chaos the region is witnessing create the atmosphere for such criminal acts which threaten the security and stability of all countries of the region," the official said.

He said that the "chaos" in the region was fuelling such attacks.

Several others were reported to have been injured, along with up to 15 others, though the Foreign Office said it was not aware of any British embassy staff being caught up in the violence.

One report indicated that shots had been fired at the British embassy, drawing a strenuous denial from the British ambassador.

"This is absolutely not true, there is no threat to any British interest in what happened," Peter Ford, the ambassador, told Reuters. "We heard explosions and exchanges of fire, but we are safe."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "Our staff are in the process of assessing the situation. There is no question of injury to any UK embassy staff."

Security forces later found a cache of arms and explosives in a raid in an upscale Damascus district Syrian television reported early this morning.

State-run TV showed footage of a room in which rocket-propelled grenades, gas cylinders and bags of yellow powder were stored. It said the makeshift depot was used by the same group that launched the attack.

Damascus has not witnessed such violence for years. Local journalists say security is relatively relaxed, with just two or three police officers posted at embassies, because Syria does not consider itself a prime target for terrorism.

Yet four months ago, the government issued a warning to western diplomats that an al-Qaida-linked group was planning an attack on one or more embassies, according to Arab journalists.

The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, was suppressed by Hafez Assad, the father of the present president, Bashar Assad. But tension between the clique running Syria and the Islamist groups have not been resolved, and many of the group are still in prison.

A second theory is that the "subversive" elements referred to by security officials could be disaffected Kurds, who have recently clashed with Arabs in the north-east of the country.

The US has threatened sanctions against Mr Assad, claiming he has not been prepared to crack down on groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas, both of which Syria supports.

While the explosions could destabilise Mr Assad, they could also help him in his relations with the US by presenting Syria as a victim of the "war on terrorism".