DAMASCUS – Moscow acknowledged Thursday that longtime ally Damascus might lose its battle with Arab- and Western-backed rebels, a view shared by NATO's head who said President Bashar Al-Assad's regime is close to collapsing. The comments came just a day after Syria's interior minister was lightly wounded in a bold Damascus attack and claims, denied by the government, that an increasingly desperate regime has begun using Scud missiles against its foes. And car bomb attacks Thursday at an army residential block and in a town southwest of Damascus killed 24 people, state media said, further highlighting the regime's vulnerability even around the capital. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov's remarks appeared to be the first public acknowledgement by a senior Russian official that the increasingly bloody 21-month conflict in Syria might culminate in a rebel victory. Bogdanov said Arab and Western recognition of the opposition Wednesday as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people had emboldened rebels to press their military campaign rather than seek the negotiated solution championed by Moscow. “They (the rebels) are saying that victory is not far away, ‘let's take Aleppo, let's take Damascus,'” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying. In recent weeks, rebel capture of a series of key army bases has given them control of large swathes of the northwest and the east, and Bogdanov said military defeat for Assad's regime could no longer be ruled out. “As for preparing for victory by the opposition, this, of course, cannot be excluded,” Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency quoted him as saying. “You need to look the facts in the eyes – the government regime is losing more and more control over a large part of the country's territory.” Those views were echoed by NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. “I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse... it is only a question of time,” Rasmussen said in Brussels, adding that Assad should “initiate a process that leads to the accommodation of the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.” A car bombing Thursday in the government-held town of Qatana, southwest of Damascus, struck near an elementary school. Children made up seven of the 16 dead and many of the 23 wounded, state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Later the same day, eight civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in another car bombing in the town of Jdaidet Artuz, state television reported. The attacks followed a Wednesday bombing of the interior ministry that killed at least five people and put Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Shaar in hospital with a shoulder injury. – Agencies
