Syrian state television reported this weekend that the governor of the Hama region was killed in a car bomb, likely by rebels battling to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. Though a Sunni, Anas Abdel Razzaq al-Naem was an Assad loyalist and Baath party member. The car bomb was one of a series of such attacks:

“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…

He was appointed by President Bashar al-Assad in July 2011, four months after the beginning of the revolt against the 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.

Hama is Syria’s fifth largest city. In 1982, the security services of then-ruler Hafez al-Assad wiped out thousands of residents in the process of putting down an uprising by the Muslim Botherhood.

Shortly after Assad appointed al-Naem governor, the regime sent in tanks to put down the anti-regime demonstrations. Dozens of people were killed in the immediate fighting.

[Photo: Scott Bobb / Wikipedia.org]