Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab announced on Monday that “a number of criminals involved in the attack” on a church in Damascus have been arrested.
The Greek Orthodox Church of the Prophet Elias was hit by a gun and suicide bomb attack on Sunday, killing at least 25 people and wounding dozens more.
Khattab said government forces carried out raids on “locations linked to cells of the terrorist organization Islamic State in the Damascus countryside.” Syrian officials unanimously blame ISIS for the attack, although there has been no formal claim of responsibility as of Tuesday morning.
The Interior Ministry said the raids resulted in the arrest of an alleged terrorist cell leader and the capture of five of its members. Two other terrorists were killed in the raids. One of them was the “primary individual involved in facilitating the suicide bomber’s entry into the church,” while the other was “preparing to carry out a second terrorist attack in another neighborhood of the capital.”
Security officials seized weapons, ammunition, and explosive devices during the raids, including suicide vests and a booby-trapped motorcycle.
“These cowardly terrorist acts will only strengthen our resolve to pursue anyone who tries to tamper with the nation’s security, and that the response against terrorist hubs will be firm and continuous,” the Interior Ministry said.
The church bombing posed a major challenge to the new government of Syria, which is run by former al-Qaeda and ISIS members who reinvented themselves as patriotic Syrian revolutionaries during the long and brutal civil war and now wish to be seen as statesmen who can deliver an inclusive government that protects every religious and ethnic group.
President Donald Trump gave the new government a major vote of confidence by meeting with its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa in May, praising him as a “young, attractive guy” with a “very strong past” and ordering U.S. sanctions on Syria lifted.
Trump was putting a heavy bet on Sharaa’s ability, and willingness, to deliver the stable and inclusive government he promised. The government’s reaction to the Damascus church bombing has been watched closely as a test of its commitment.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) warned on Sunday that the church bombing has “renewed fears of attempts to destabilize sectarian co-existence” in Damascus.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-aligned coalition that fought the Islamic State as well as dictator Bashar Assad during the civil war, denounced the bombing as a “cowardly terrorist attack” that “targeted all Syrian components who love freedom and peace.”
“Terrorism represents a concern for all Syrians and is a common enemy of the authentic Syrian social fabric,” the SDF said.
Although the SDF has a somewhat uneasy relationship with the junta in Damascus, it promised to “participate in any Syrian effort against terrorism in all Syrian regions.”
