An explosion has killed at least eight people and injured 18 others during Friday prayers inside a mosque in the Syrian city of Homs, the health ministry has said. The blast tore through the Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib Mosque as worshippers gathered for the week’s most sacred prayers, turning a place of peace into a scene of carnage.
Pictures from Syria’s state-run news agency, Sana, show the inside of the mosque with black, scorched walls, smashed windows and blood on the carpet. The haunting images reveal the visceral aftermath of what officials believe was an explosive device detonated inside the building, according to a security source cited by Sana.
While authorities scramble to find the perpetrators, a shadowy jihadist group has already claimed responsibility. The group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, stated it carried out the attack in collaboration with another unidentified faction, using explosives planted at the site. This is not the first time the group’s name has surfaced after a major attack; it rose to prominence in June after claiming a deadly bombing at a church in Damascus.
The location of the attack is highly significant. The mosque is in Homs’s Wadi al-Dhahab neighbourhood, a community predominantly composed of the Alawite ethnoreligious group. Syria’s Foreign Ministry was quick to condemn what it called a “terrorist crime,” stating on X that this “cowardly act is a blatant assault on human and moral values” designed to “undermine the security and stability” of the country.
But who is really behind the attack? The origins of Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah are murky, its affiliations opaque. Some terrorism observers and regional analysts are already speculating a frightening possibility: that the group could be a front for the Islamic State (IS). The similarity in their brutal messaging and choice of sectarian targets—minority communities and symbols of the state—has raised serious questions about the group’s authenticity and true masters.
This latest claim of responsibility shatters a months-long lull in the group’s announced operations, which have largely taken the form of alleged targeted killings. The blast strikes at the heart of a nation still raw from conflict. It comes just one year after Syrian rebel forces overthrew the long-standing regime of Bashar al-Assad, who is himself Alawite. Since that upheaval, the country has endured waves of sectarian violence, with Alawite communities living in fear of reprisals. Assad fled to ally Russia, where he remains in exile.
The attack is a grim reminder that the conflict has simply entered a new, volatile phase. In March, security forces were accused of killing dozens of Alawites in the coastal province of Latakia, according to the war monitoring group SOHR. Today’s mosque bombing suggests that for some, the war is far from over—it has simply found new, softer targets.
