At least eight people have been killed and more than 18 injured when an explosion struck an Alawite mosque in Syria’s Homs province, according to local officials.
The attack targeted the Imam Ali bin Abi Talib Mosque in the Wadi al-Dahab neighbourhood of Homs during Friday prayers, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
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Footage verified by Al Jazeera showed people fleeing the mosque in panic, placing some victims on stretchers and carrying others, wrapped in cloaks, to ambulances.
The blast appeared to have taken place in the corner of the mosque’s main prayer hall, leaving a small crater in the wall and scorching the surrounding area, with prayer carpets ripped and strewn with debris, and books and fragments scattered across the floor.
Local officials told the Reuters news agency the blast may have been caused by a suicide bomber or explosives placed there.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said security forces had imposed a cordon around the area and were investigating.
Ayman Oghanna, Al Jazeera’s correspondent who visited the site of the explosion on Friday, said the attack likely aims to stir up sectarian tensions in the religiously diverse city of Homs.
“Government forces are surrounding the mosque and an investigation team has gone inside,” he said.
A group that calls itself Saraya Ansar al-Sunna has claimed responsibility for the attack, warning that its attacks will “continue and escalate”.
‘Attempt to sow chaos’
Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer in international security at the Kings’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Friday’s attack demonstrates the continuation of some of the brutal tactics used by groups that want to keep Syria weak and divided and unstable.
Geist said Saraya Ansar al-Sunna is a violent group with close affiliation to ISIL (ISIS).
“Their playbook is to attack miniority groups to stir up tension and to make Syria ungovernable and unstable,” he said.
Syria’s government condemned the attack, saying it was the latest in a series of “desperate attempts to undermine security and stability and sow chaos among the Syrian people.”
“Syria reiterates its firm stance in combating terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” the Foreign Ministry added in a statement.
“Remnants of the former regime, ISIS militants and collaborators have converged on a single goal: obstructing the path of the new state by undermining stability, threatening civil peace, and eroding the shared coexistence and common destiny of Syrians throughout history,” the Syrian information minister said in a post on X.
Friday’s attack also underscores the country’s fragile security situation a year after the fall of the government of former President Bashar al-Assad, as the new authorities in Damascus struggle to assert control.
Last week, the United States bombed ISIL positions in Syria in retaliation for the killings of two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter. Damascus also joined a global anti-ISIL alliance in November, pledging to crush the remaining elements of the group.