Syria denies assassination attempt on Bashar al-Assad

Syria was forced to deny that President Bashar al-Assad was the target of an attempted assassination in a rebel rocket attack on Thursday as state television broadcast pictures of a nervous-looking president attending prayers.

Two armed groups claimed that they had hit Assad's presidential vehicles with artillery as he travelled through the Malki area of Damascus to attend prayers at the start of Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

To deny the claim, Syrian state television broadcast images of the president in the Anas Bin Malek mosque, praying alongside senior Ba'ath party officials and the Grand Mufti of Syria. In the brief video recording, the Syrian leader was seen to move quickly and, while smiling and shaking hands, his eyes darted nervously as he began praying. It was not possible to confirm independently when the footage was taken, whether before or after the alleged attack.

Omran Zoabi, the Syrian information minister, denied an attack had taken place, deriding the claims as "dreams and illusions". "The president arrived at the mosque driving his own car, he attended the prayer and greeted everyone in the mosque as he does every day when he meets people," Zoabi said.

Ahmed Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, who was pictured sitting beside the president in the mosque, added: "This is totally untrue, a couple of shells fell in the neighbourhood as they have done in every part of Damascus in recent months. There was no assassination attempt. "I was next to the president, we prayed together. After he spoke to people outside the mosque and drove away in his car."

Two Islamist groups, Liwa al-Islam and Liwa Tahrir al-Sham, later separately claimed responsibility for the attack. Islam Alloush, a spokesman for the Liwa al-Islam brigade, said: "We fired Grad rockets at 7.20am, intending to hit Bashar al-Assad. We had been planning the operation for one week."

Alloush said that "informers" for the group in the area had told him that one of the rockets hit the motorcade, injuring or killing some of Mr Assad's bodyguards. The watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that three mortar shells hit the Malki district in the early morning, but said that it was sceptical of rumours that the motorcade had been hit.

Residents in the district confirmed that the area had been shelled. The neighbourhood, lying less than a mile from Mr Assad's palace, is a regime stronghold where the president feels safest. The heavily protected area has barely suffered from violence in the two and half years of civil war. Emboldened by a string of recent military wins, Assad has made his presence felt in Damascus, visiting the suburb of Daraya when his troops won it back from the rebels last month.

Assassination attempts and death threats against supporters of the Syrian regime have become common in Damascus in recent months. Dozens of pro-government businessmen, TV personalities, officials and their families have been found shot dead in their homes, or killed in hit-and-run attacks on the street.

In another move designed to pressure the Syrian regime, the leader of the exiled Syrian National Coalition, the main political opposition group, appeared in the southern Syrian city of Deraa yesterday.

Video footage showed Ahmed al-Jarba, the opposition leader, praying in a mosque in the city, which is close to the Jordanian border and is known to have held the first protests against the regime. At least 4,420 people, more than half of those civilians, were killed in Syria during the holy month of Ramadan, the Syrian Observatory said.