BEIRUT: Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt said Thursday the recent attack on the military command center in Damascus symbolized the start of a civil war in Syria and slammed the international community for failure to end the bloodshed in Lebanon’s neighbor.

“If Syria's fire in most of the country in the past 20 months is smoldering with detentions, abductions, rape, killing, shelling and destruction, then the fire at the military headquarters at Ummayad Square has a symbolic meaning that Syria will drown in chaos, civil war, destruction along with the Syrian army,” Jumblatt said in a statement.

Syrian rebels carried out a double bomb attack Wednesday against the military headquarters in Damascus. An Islamist rebel group, Tajamo Ansar al-Islam, claimed responsibility for what they said was a suicide attack launched in collaboration with other rebel forces, killing five of its fighters, including the suicide bomber, and wounding dozens

“This army today is burning under the command of Syria’s ruler and as a result of his claims,” Jumblatt said, noting the differences between the Syrian military under the command of Bashar Assad and his father, Hafez.

He praised the Syrian army's "confrontation of the Israeli occupation in 1982.”

“One gets a feeling of anger, hatred, and contempt toward those who lead Syria to this fire ... most notably the Ceaser in the Kremlin, that bird lover and the bear hunter,” Jumblatt said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Jumblatt has repeatedly criticized Russia and China for blocking U.N. Security Council resolutions that aimed at condemning Syria’s crackdown on the 18-month-old uprising.

In his statement, the PSP leader also criticized the inaction of the international and Arab communities, saying that they merely provide a “surplus of resonant statements that are useless.”