Damascus: "Assassinations have begun" whispered young Syrians to each other on the streets of Damascus.

They were terrified, needless to say, by the Wednesday murder of nuclear engineer Aws Abdul Karim Khalil, who was shot dead while driving his wife to work in the midland city of Homs. A professor at Al Baath University (160 kilometres north of Damascus), Khalil was neither a member of the opposition nor was he known for any public association with the Syrian government.

The assassination scene, Homs, once a sleepy city in Syria's heartland, is now boiling with violence and target assassinations, sparked off originally by Bedouin and Alawite residents of the Homs vicinity, which eventually attracted the city's urban population.

His assassination, the fourth of its kind in Syria since demonstrations swept the country last March, has sent shivers down the spine of Syrian academics and scientists, both those who are with or against the regime.

Some say it could have been a revenge killing. Others argue that Al Qaida affiliate groups are behind the killing, trying to spread radical Islam in Homs, a hotbed of intense fighting for months. Pro-regime media blamed "armed terrorist groups" while opposition websites accuse the regime itself of killing Professor Khalil, ostensibly, because he had recently called for reforms.

A coalition of opposition activists, Al Ghad, said that his murder was "yet another attempt to crush the people's peaceful revolution." Last Sunday, Dr Hassan Eid, the director of chest surgery at the National Hospital in Homs, was also gunned down.

Syrian TV aired confessions of an arrested 26-year old Bilal Abdul Halim Hassoun, a locksmith who claimed to have personally shot Eid. Other recent assassinations include that of Mohammad Ali Aqil, 49, the Deputy Rector of the Faculty of Architecture at Al Baath University and Nael Al Dakhil, 54, director of the Military Petrochemical School—both located in Homs.

History

The assassination of scientists is not new to the Arab World. Historically however, and especially at a grassroots level, the prime suspect in any target assassinations of this calibre is Israel.

Israel's Mossad has carried out assassinations in Syria before, like the 2004 murder of Hamas chief Ezz Al Deen Shaikh Khalil in Damascus, followed by the 2008 killing of Hezbollah co-founder Emad Mugniyeh.

The more recent Israel killing of Hamas chief Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai in early 2010 adds fear to claims that Israel is still killing enemies across the Arab world and might use the current unrest in Syria to eliminate scientists who either pose — or have the potential of posing — a future threat to Israel.

Iran has blamed Israel for the killing of its scientists. The Iranians blamed Mossad when Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran's Isfahan uranium plant, died because of "gas poisoning" in 2007. In November 2010, Majid Shahirairi, a member of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency and prominent nuclear scientist, was killed by a motorbike assassin, followed by the murder of nuclear physicist Dariush Rezaei. Both killings were blamed on Israel.

Last year, The Daily Telegraph ran an interview with a former CIA official and STRATFOR Senior Analyst Reva Bhalla, who accused Israel of gunning down Iranian scientists. The aim, he claimed, was to disrupt Iran's nuclear programme.