ALBAWABA — Twenty people were killed and more than fifty were hurt in a suicide bombing in a church in Damascus, Syria's capital. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Damascus since the fall of the Assad government.
On Sunday night, there was a blast at Saint Mar Elias Church in Damascus's Dweila'a neighborhood. The Syrian Interior Ministry says that an Islamic State (ISIS) suicide bomber went into the church, shot at people who were praying, and then set off an explosive vest.
After the fact, the Ministry of Health revealed that the attack had killed 20 people and hurt 52 others. As soon as emergency services arrived, they took the victims to nearby hospitals while security guards blocked off the area.
Minister of Information Hamza Al-Mustafa spoke out against the attack, calling it a "cowardly act of terrorism" and sending his sympathies to the families of the dead. In a message made to X (formerly Twitter), he said, "This crime goes against the values of equal citizenship that we all share." He also promised that the government would keep working to get rid of terrorist groups.
Since Bashar al-Assad's government fell in December 2024, this is the first attack of its kind. Since the fall of the regime, the new government in Syria has sent a lot of security forces to fight leftover ISIS members, including to the northern province of Aleppo, where fighting has recently gotten worse.
Even though the government has changed and security has been tightened across the country, the bombing shows that radical groups are still a threat.
