Eight people were killed in an explosion at a mosque belonging to the Alawite minority sect in the Syrian city of Homs on Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA said.<\/p>\n
SANA cited Syrian Health Ministry official Najib al-Naasan as saying 21 others were wounded and that the figures were preliminary, indicating they could rise.<\/p>\n
Homs city\u2019s press office said an explosive device had detonated inside the Imam Ali bin Abi Talib mosque and that security forces had cordoned off the area.<\/p>\n
Local official Issam Naameh told Reuters the blast took place during Friday noon prayers, typically the busiest time for mosques.<\/p>\n
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Syrian state media published footage showing rescuers and security forces examining debris splayed across the mosque\u2019s green carpet.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n
Syria has been rocked by several episodes of sectarian violence since longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, was ousted by a rebel offensive last year and replaced by a government led by members of the Sunni Muslim majority.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, two American soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in central Syria by an attacker described by authorities as a suspected member of Islamic State, a violent Sunni Muslim group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eight people were killed in an explosion at a mosque belonging to the Alawite minority sect in the Syrian city of Homs on Friday, Syrian state news agency SANA said. SANA cited Syrian Health Ministry official Najib al-Naasan as saying 21 others were wounded and that the figures were preliminary, indicating they could rise. Homs …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}