Syrian Rebel Car Bomb Kills 14 Outside Homs Alawite Mosque

Rebels Claimed the Attack Was Carried Out by Military

A car bomb exploded outside of the Bilal al-Habshi mosque in Homs today, killing 14 people who were leaving at the end of Friday prayers. The Alawite mosque is deep in a pro-government neighborhood.

The timing of the bombing, as the military moves against the last rebel-held areas of Homs, has it seen as a retaliatory strike, and several al-Qaeda linked factions in Syria are keen to use car bombings.

Exactly which group carried out the attack is unclear, though Jabhat al-Nusra is one of the factions most commonly associated with the tactic in the ongoing civil war.

Bizarrely, some rebels claimed the military carried out the strike, which is neither a common way for the military to attack something, not particularly practical since the mosque and worshipers were in such a pro-government neighborhood.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.