Syria says IS planned New Year's Eve attacks on churches

DAMASCUS: Syria said Thursday a suicide bomber who killed a security forces member in Aleppo on New Year's Eve was in the Islamic State group, which planned attacks on churches and gatherings.

IS recently increased its attacks in areas of Syria controlled by the Damascus authorities, and was blamed for an attack last month in Palmyra that killed three Americans.




The interior ministry said in a statement it had information that IS planned "suicide operations and attacks targeting New Year's celebrations in a number of governorates, particularly the city of Aleppo, by targeting churches and civilian gathering spots", prompting security to be tightened.

In Aleppo's Bab al-Faraj neighbourhood, one officer "became suspicious of a person who was later found to be affiliated with Daesh", the statement said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

While being interrogated, the man "opened fire, resulting in the martyrdom of one of the police officers, and then he blew himself up, wounding two officers while they were trying to intervene to arrest him".

On December 13, two US soldiers and an American civilian were killed in an attack Washington blamed on a lone IS gunman in Syria's Palmyra.

In retaliation, American forces struck scores of IS targets in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the US strikes killed five members of the jihadist group.

Syrian authorities have also carried out several operations against IS since then, saying on December 25 they had killed a senior leader of the group.

In November, during a visit by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Washington, Syria officially joined the US-led coalition against IS.

Sharaa is an Islamist ruler and a former jihadist whose group fought IS at the height of his country's civil war.

Sharaa's rule since the December 2024 fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad has raised concerns among minorities, who have fallen victim to deadly sectarian violence over the past year.

Civilians among the Alawite community to which Assad belonged were massacred on the coast in March, and there were clashes in Druze-majority Sweida province in July.

In June, a suicide bombing in a Damascus church killed 25 people.

Syria's authorities blamed IS, but a shadowy Sunni extremist group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility.

Analysts have said Saraya Ansar al-Sunna serves as a front for the IS group.