White House spokesman: Syria’s next step after a professional job by their police at the US embassy is to be constructive about war on terror

One Syrian guard and three assailants were killed, 14 injured in the terrorist attack Tuesday, the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11. All the US staff were safe. The White House spokesman said Damascus must stop harboring terrorists, stop being an agent fomenting terror and “work with us to fight terror as Libya has done.” The Syrian embassy in Washington responded by blasting US policy in the Middle East as fueling terrorism.
Large Syrian forces surrounded the embassy after assailants threw hand grenades and RPG rockets and opened heavy automatic fire on the Syrian guards outside the embassy. One car bomb went off and a second, a van loaded with pipe bombs linked to gas canisters, failed.
debkafile‘s counter-terror sources add the assault team, almost certainly Al Qaeda from Lebanon, was large enough to attack the US embassy compound from several directions and plant bomb devices around the building. US Marines in the embassy are said to have taken part in the gunfight. A Chinese diplomat suffered minor injuries as he photographed the attack from the roof of the neighboring Chinese embassy.

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