Syrian authorities have foiled an attempt by ISIL (ISIS) fighters to blow up a revered Shia shrine in a Damascus suburb, state news agency SANA has reported.
Intelligence and security forces “succeeded in thwarting an attempt by ISIL to carry out a bombing inside the Sayyida Zeinab shrine”, a source within Syria’s intelligence agency told SANA on Saturday, adding that several people have been arrested.
“The General Intelligence Directorate is utilising all its resources to confront all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their diversity,” the intelligence official told SANA.
The interior ministry posted pictures of four men it said were members of an ISIL cell who had been arrested in the countryside outside the capital. It also published images of equipment allegedly seized from the suspects, including smartphones, two rifles, three explosive devices and several hand grenades.
The photos showed the identity papers of two Lebanese and a Palestinian refugee living in Lebanon.
“The shrine they were trying to target is on the southern outskirts of Damascus,” Al Jazeera’s Hamza Mohamed said, reporting from Damascus.
“It’s an important religious site for Shia Muslims. They believe the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad is buried [there].”
Mohamed noted that it is not the first time this shrine has been targeted. “In 2008, there was a car bomb … [in which] 17 people were killed,” he said.
ISIL also previously targeted the Damascus shrine, Syria’s most visited Shia pilgrimage site, claiming responsibility for a double suicide attack in February 2016 close to the mausoleum that killed 134 people.
The group had also claimed a triple blast near the sanctuary several weeks earlier that took the lives of at least 70 people, while in July 2023 a bomb killed at least six people near the mausoleum.
Shia shrines have been a frequent target of attacks by Sunni groups such as ISIL, both in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
Iran-backed guards used to be deployed at the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab mausoleum, but they fled last month, shortly before Sunni-led rebels swept into the Syrian capital and toppled President Bashar al-Assad.
Iran-backed fighters had been key supporters of al-Assad since the war broke out in 2011.
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