Eight people died and 18 were injured this Friday by an explosion – which authorities describe as an attack – in an Alawite mosque in the Syrian city of Homs during the main prayer of the week. For the moment, the Interior Ministry is not naming any group for the attack, which has also not been claimed. This comes as Syria enters its second year of transition – following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime – with more IS terrorist actions and tensions between different ethnic and religious groups.
The Interior Ministry, which called what happened a “terrorist attack,” emphasizes that state security units established a security cordon around the mosque to collect evidence. The 18 injured, several of them seriously, are hospitalized.
Al Jazeera said the explosion occurred during Friday midday prayers, when the mosque was full of worshipers. The Homs provincial spokesperson places its origin in an improvised explosive device. Apparently he was hidden in a corner of the prayer room, due to the small crater visible in the images that circulated. These cries of anguish are heard and we see the wounded evacuated on stretchers.
The mosque is called Imam Ali bin Abi Talib. The Alawites, who profess Shiite Islam, see in him a divine manifestation and the legitimate successor of Muhammad, in the schism which divided the Muslim religion in two shortly after its birth. The Alawites are the favored minority for decades and include the Assad family, which ruled Syria with an iron fist for half a century until the lightning offensive that toppled his son Bashar (who fled to Moscow) and ended nearly 14 years of war.
In the past, Shiites have been the target of ISIS, which has increased its attacks in Syria since the fall of Assad. On the 13th, one of his sympathizers, infiltrated by the security forces, killed three Americans who were part of a joint patrol with Syrian forces. It was the largest attack on U.S. troops in the country since 2019, and President Donald Trump ordered a wave of bombings against the terrorist group’s positions in retaliation.
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