4 Killed In Damascus Gun Battle

Fierce armed clashes between terrorists and police in a diplomatic quarter of Damascus late Tuesday killed two attackers, a policeman and woman who was in the area, an Interior Ministry official said.

The attack occurred in the Mazza district in west Damascus and centered around a vacated former U.N. building, which was extensively damaged during fighting that lasted 70 minutes between police and militants firing guns and grenade launchers.

A U.N. spokeswoman said the building, which was formerly occupied by the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force that oversees an agreement between Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights, may have been hit in the attack.

Syria has not seen such violence in years.

"The exact target and motivation of the attack is still unclear," reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips.

The Syrian government of Bashir al Assad has insisted that — despite evidence to the contrary — it is attempting to stop militants from infiltrating into neighboring Iraq, reports Phillips.

But if this attack was directed at the U.N., it's another warning that renewed involvement in neighboring Iraq will be a potentially dangerous enterprise, Phillips reports.

The Interior Ministry official told the state-run news agency, SANA, that four gunmen detonated a bomb placed under a car, which damaged an unidentified nearby building, before Syrian security forces surrounded the group and exchanged gun fire.

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

The 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 and condemned acts which threaten the security and stability of all countries of the region," the official said.

The official did not elaborate, but he was apparently referring to the escalating violence in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and in neighboring Iraq, where insurgent attacks are increasing against U.S.-led forces.

In Washington, an administration official said the State Department has received reports of two explosions and of small arms fire in the Syrian capital. The official, asking not to be identified, said there were no reports of American casualties.

She added that the embassy expects to be closed on Wednesday along with the school in Damascus that serves the American community.

A U.N. employee in Damascus, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.N. offices in the capital, including the United Nations Development Fund and its Children's Fund, have also been ordered closed Wednesday.

"Unidentified terrorists attacked a U.N. office building in Damascus and this office is surrounded by many embassies as well," Syria's ambassador to America, Imad Moustapha, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Washington. "It's very early to tell what (were) the attackers' motives or who they are."

Moustapha said "there was a random exchange of fire and probably every building in that area was hit by a grenade or a bullet."

Syria's official news agency SANA, quoting a security source, said "a terrorist band shot this evening indiscriminately in the Mazza area."

Late into the evening, smoke was seen billowing from Mazza and ambulances and police cars rushed to the area, which had been sealed off by security forces.

"It is our understanding that a building formerly occupied by UNDOF, which is still known as a U.N. building, may have been hit," a U.N. spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said in New York.

"Our preliminary information is that all U.N. staff and facilities are safe and accounted for," she added.

Large crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of the damaged former U.N. building as youths drove by honking car horns, waving pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and chanting pro-Syrian and pro-Assad slogans.

In neighboring Iraq, terrorists have twice bombed the U.N. headquarters in the capital, Baghdad, since the U.S.-led war began last year. The first, on Aug. 19, killed 22 people including top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Mazza is home to the British ambassador's home, offices of the Iranian state news agency, the Iranian Embassy and the Canadian Embassy are in Mazza. British and Iranian diplomatic officials said their embassies were not targeted in the attack.

Syria has been on the U.S. State Department's list of terror-sponsoring nations for its support of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that attack Israel. Syria, though, says the anti-Israeli groups are not terrorist, and that it has an interest in fighting Islamic extremist groups like al Qaeda.

Syria has come under intense pressure, particularly from Washington, to crack down on militants based in the country who are opposed to Israel or purportedly entering neighboring Iraq to fight U.S. soldiers.

Neighboring Jordan said several suspected terrorists entered the country from Syria last month in a foiled plot to carry out attacks on targets including the U.S. Embassy in Amman, the prime minister's office and the secret service agency.

Damascus denied claims that suspected terrorists entered Jordan from Syria and has said it is trying to stop foreign fighters from cross from its territory into Iraq, but that the long, porous border is hard to police.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Syria's hard-line government fought a fierce war with Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was blamed for a 1980 assassination attempt on President Hafez Assad, the country's authoritarian leader who died from natural causes in 2000. Assad was succeeded by his son, Bashar Assad.

In 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood staged a rebellion in the northern province of Hama. During the clashes, Syrian forces razed much of the city, killing as many as 10,000 people and finally crushing the Brotherhood after a five-year war.