04-25-2024  12:37 pm   •   PDX and SEA Weather
By Saad Abedine CNN
Published: 20 February 2013



Two mortar shells hit a sports stadium Wednesday in Damascus, killing a soccer player, Syria's state-run news agency said.

The shells fell on Tishreen Sport City Stadium in the al-Baramkeh neighborhood of the capital, the Syrian Arab News Agency said. The player was training at the time, the report said.

The government blamed "terrorists" for the attack.

Throughout the civil war in Syria, as the government has brutally cracked down on the opposition, President Bashar al-Assad's administration has continuously blamed "terrorists" for violence.

In other developments, Lebanese news agency NNA reported that former minister and parliament member Michel Samaha has been indicted, as has Lebanese Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, on charges of planning to carry out terrorist acts, preparing explosives and transferring the material from Syria to Lebanon.

The explosives, the news agency said, were intended to be placed in public places to assassinate deputies, religious figures and political dignitaries. Authorities are seeking the death penalty against the men.

Mamlouk, an Alawite, is the head of national security and al-Assad's special security adviser. The United States has leveled sanctions against him, alleging human rights abuses and violence against civilians.

In October, Wissam Al-Hassan, the Lebanese chief of the Internal Security Forces Information Branch in charge of Samaha's case, was assassinated in a car bombing that rocked central Beirut, Lebanon.

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