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.
Alawites do not have mosques, only devotional rooms.