At least eight people were killed and about 20 others injured in an explosion during Friday Prayer at a mosque in the Syrian city of Homs, a spokesman for the country’s Interior Ministry said.
The blast struck the Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib Mosque in the Wadi al-Dahab neighborhood, the spokesman, Noureddine al-Baba, said in an interview with Syria’s state-run television. The neighborhood is predominantly populated by the Alawite minority, two residents said in interviews.
A group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the blast. Counterterrorism analysts say it appears to be a splinter group of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
The United States carried out strikes against ISIS this month after President Trump accused the group of killing three Americans during an attack in central Syria. The Trump administration said on Thursday that it had struck Islamic State targets in Nigeria.
In a post on social media, Ansar al-Sunna said it collaborated with “jihadists from another group” to detonate explosives inside the mosque, but did not say who it was affiliated with. The group previously claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing attack on a church in the capital, Damascus, in June that left 25 people dead.
Photos and video published by the SANA news agency on Friday showed debris scattered across the mosque’s carpets, black soot on the walls and red stains on the ground that appeared to be blood.
The Interior Ministry said in its statement that the internal security forces had imposed a cordon on the mosque and had begun “investigating and collecting evidence to prosecute the perpetrators of this criminal act.”
The explosion underscored the mounting security challenges facing the country a year after the ousting of Mr. al-Assad and the end of his family’s five-decade tyrannical rule.
Since the fall of Mr. al-Assad, who was himself an Alawite, Syria’s new government has struggled to protect minority communities, as sectarian, ethnic and political tensions have repeatedly flared.
In March, a series of ambushes on the Syrian security forces by supporters of Mr. al-Assad ignited days of retaliatory sectarian violence, which killed more than 1,600 civilians, most of whom were Alawites.
In November, members of the Alawite community staged protests after they were attacked by members of the Bedouin Sunni community in Homs following the brutal killing of a Bedouin couple, which was blamed on Alawites. After an investigation, the Interior Ministry said the killing was of a criminal nature and not a sectarian one.
The violence has unfolded against a broader backdrop of persistent instability across the country.
Militant groups, among them the Islamic State, have intensified their operations in recent weeks, carrying out attacks against Syrian security personnel.
Syria’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Friday’s explosion was a “cowardly criminal act” that represented “desperate attempts to undermine security and stability and spread chaos among the Syrian people.”
Haneen Ahmad, a political activist who lives in the neighborhood, said the explosion shook the area and left people sheltering in their homes in fear.
“Everyone is in panic,” Ms. Ahmad said in a phone interview. “We remained indoors till we heard the sound of the ambulances coming to the rescue.”
Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent for The Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He covers a broad range of issues including geopolitics, business, society and arts.
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