The Sayyida Zeinab shrine in Damascus has beforehand been focused by ISIL and different armed teams in Syria.
Syrian authorities have foiled an try by ISIL (ISIS) fighters to explode a revered Shia shrine in a Damascus suburb, state information company SANA has reported.
Intelligence and safety forces “succeeded in thwarting an try by ISIL to hold out a bombing contained in the Sayyida Zeinab shrine”, a supply inside Syria’s intelligence company informed SANA on Saturday, including that a number of individuals have been arrested.
“The Common Intelligence Directorate is utilising all its assets to confront all makes an attempt to focus on the Syrian individuals in all their range,” the intelligence official informed SANA.
The inside ministry posted photos of 4 males it stated had been members of an ISIL cell who had been arrested within the countryside outdoors the capital.
It additionally revealed photos of kit allegedly seized from the suspects, together with smartphones, two rifles, three explosive gadgets and a number of other hand grenades.
The photographs confirmed the identification papers of two Lebanese and a Palestinian refugee residing in Lebanon.
“The shrine they had been making an attempt to focus on is on the southern outskirts of Damascus,” Al Jazeera’s Hamza Mohamed stated, reporting from Damascus.
“It’s an essential non secular web site for Shia Muslims. They consider the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad is buried [there].”
Mohamed famous that it’s not the primary time this shrine has been focused.
“In 2008, there was a automotive bomb … [in which] 17 individuals had been killed,” he stated.
ISIL additionally beforehand focused the Damascus shrine, Syria’s most visited Shia pilgrimage web site, claiming duty for a double suicide assault in February 2016 near the mausoleum that killed 134 individuals.
The group had additionally claimed a triple blast close to the sanctuary a number of weeks earlier that took the lives of at the very least 70 individuals.
A July 2023 bombing killed at the very least six individuals close to the mausoleum.
Shia shrines have been a frequent goal of assaults by Sunni teams akin to ISIL, each in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
Iran-backed guards was once deployed on the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab mausoleum, however they fled final month, shortly earlier than Sunni-led rebels swept into the Syrian capital and toppled President Bashar al-Assad.
Iran-backed fighters had been key supporters of al-Assad because the conflict broke out in 2011.
