☠Damascus crisis-cell bombing kills Assef Shawkat, Dawoud Rajha and Hassan Turkmani

On 18 July 2012 a bombing targeted a meeting of the "crisis management cell" in the National Security building in Damascus, killing the defence minister Dawoud Rajha, his deputy Assef Shawkat, Bashar al-Assad's brother-in-law, and the assistant Hassan Turkmani, and wounding the interior minister and the head of the National Security Bureau. The Free Army and the "Islam Brigade" claimed it, and its circumstances were never officially disclosed. The bombing may not have been an inside job, but it removed centres of power among the men of the Hafez era at a moment Bashar used to tighten his grip on the security establishment. With Khaddam sidelined and Kanaan dead (2005), then Rustom Ghazaleh (2015), most of the men of the Hafez era left the scene, and Bashar's control of his services was completed in the war years.