For extremists all roads lead to Damascus

DAMASCUS, Syria, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Diverse terrorist groups blacklisted by the United States have found a safe haven in the Syrian capital, CBS reports.

Syrian President Bashar Assad provides both refuge and support to more than 15 various extremists groups, including two of the largest, Hamas and Hezbollah, CBS reported Friday.

In Damascus extremist leaders are given diplomatic immunity along with channels for arms smuggling, banking and logistical support, the report said.

But most threatening to the United States, according to CBS, are the hundreds of al-Qaida foreign fighters recruited to become human bombs in Iraq.

"Syria has played a decisive role in frustrating the American project in Iraq in helping the resistance and the insurgency in Iraq, in bleeding forces in Iraq," Professor Fawaz Gerges of Sarah Lawrence College, told CBS.

In an interview with CBS, Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk said all the groups gathered in Damascus are facing one common enemy -- Israel.

"We're facing the same problem, the same enemy," Marzouk says.