A Terrorist Suicide Bombing in a Damascus Church Triggers a Wider Takfiri Purge of Syrian Minorities
On 22 June at approximately 6:30pm during a crowded Sunday mass at Mar Elias Church in Damascus, two terrorists opened fire on the congregation and one detonated his suicide belt, murdering 27 Syrian civilians and injuring more than 60 others. The Greek Orthodox Church is located in the Christian Dweila neighbourhood of Damascus.
Eyewitness accounts and videos leaked online reported that two armed individuals approached the church and opened fire on Christians entering for Sunday Mass. Three young men from the church confronted them and forced them to the ground. One fled, and the first attacker detonated himself.
Watch the subtitled interview with one eyewitness immediately after the attack:
Video of eyewitness account
Mrs. Laure Al-Nasr, the wife of one of the men who confronted the terrorists, spoke about the events publicly:
Her husband Greis Bechara and his brother Boutros were among the first to confront the suicide bomber as he approached the Church during the service. According to Laure, shots were fired at the Church windows before the attacker entered, firing upon attendees and armed with a grenade.
Greis managed to kick the grenade from the bomber’s hand, and his brother Boutros tackled the attacker to the ground. Moments later, the bomber detonated his explosive belt—killing the brothers instantly, along with several family members and worshippers nearby.
The Al Qaeda regime in Damascus took their time to condemn or even register the attack on Syrian Christians. When they did, they accused ISIS of the crime. They arrested what they described as an ‘ISIS cell’ at Kafr Batna, in the Damascus countryside, the next day.
The regime also accused the Kurdish SDF factions in the northeast of facilitating the passage of the ISIS terrorists. This tenuous claim was based on a printed schedule of diesel fuel distribution that apparently included the name of one of the attackers.
How could the Jolani-led Ahmed Al Sharaa regime be so sure that ISIS had carried out the attack? No investigation of the crime scene had been carried out. Civilians and journalists had already entered the site and had clearly tampered with potential evidence. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Interior issued their first statement at 7:50pm, less than two hours after the attack, accusing ISIS of the massacre.
It is interesting that the Jolani administration could so easily identify the perpetrator of the Dweila bombing, while months after the ethnic cleansing pogroms against Syrian minorities intensified in March 2025, they are “unable” to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to justice or even identify them. In the Dweila case, the ISIS cell was arrested within 24 hours. Many who saw the arrest video described it as a farcical performance and “staged”.
An alleged ISIS statement was issued the next day, also unusually fast for the terror organisation. According to sources inside Syria who cannot be named for their safety, the statement contained serious doctrinal errors that suggest the statement is also false.
ISIS statement in Arabic and English
The word Nusayri refers only to the Alawite sect. Christians are referred to as ‘Nasara’ by the sectarian terrorist factions. A hardline Takfiri group like ISIS would not make such an error. It is repeated in the second paragraph: “opening fire on the Nusayri”.
The statement accused Christians of declaring their loyalty to the ‘new Nusayri regime’—a term given to the former (Alawite) President Assad’s Government by the terrorist factions in Syria. Why would ISIS refer to Jolani’s Al Qaeda regime in these terms? They know it to be false, even from an ideological standpoint. The statement even claims that Jolani or Ahmed Al Sharaa is “no different from the Nusayris and the Crusaders”. While ISIS may be opposed to Jolani and what he is doing in Syria, they would not use such terminology. This level of insult would benefit Jolani because it is too easily denied.
A statement then appeared from a Takfiri group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunna (SAS) taking responsibility for the attack. They accused “Christians of Damascus” of provocations that led to the attack. They referred to a previous incident where the group drove into the Christian areas demanding conversion to Islam. The perpetrator of the operation was named as Muhammad Zayn al-Abidin (Abu Uthman). The Jolani narrative was dismissed as fabricated. The group called on Syria’s minorities to “repent before it is too late” and said further attacks against Christians and other minorities would be launched.
The spokesman for the Jolani-elected Ministry of Interior claimed in a press conference that no such group existed. This, however, is another lie. This is taken from a Washington Institute report on the attack:
The information known so far indicates that SAS is led by Abu Aisha al-Shami and sharia official Abu al-Fatah al-Shami. Since Assad’s ouster, it has primarily focused on attacking former regime members, often publishing the names and pictures of potential assassination targets on Telegram. It also warned President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s new government not to obstruct its operations, once again using Telegram to identify any officials deemed to be impeding the assassination campaign. This online “wanted list” approach could indicate that SAS is more of a decentralized network of lone actors than a formal organization.
The EU-funded Syrian Observatory of Human Rights also pinpointed the SAS faction as responsible for the attack. Sources considered reliable by SOHR identified one of the attackers as a member of Jolani’s Ministry of Defence.
They are a faction that was known to have split from the Jolani/MI6-rebranded Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to follow the path of sectarian Takfiri policies after the fall of Damascus. Prior to this, it is believed the group cooperated with HTS to recruit terror cells that operated in the Assad-government protected areas.
The group accused the new HTS Government of not ruling by extreme Sharia and described it as "apostate". The group began announcing itself as an independent entity last February and carried out a series of attacks, most notably the massacre in the village of Arzeh in Hama Province. Some local sources also indicate that the group absorbed some members of the Haras Al Din or "Guardians of Religion" organisation, the former Al Qaeda branch that disbanded in January as well. It is also a long-term challenger to Jolani’s power base.
The relationship between Saraya Ansar al-Sunna and ISIS is more complex. While the group shows ideological proximity to the organisation and does not mind cooperating with it, it denies full alignment. The group does, however, have a media branch known as ‘Dabiq Media Foundation’ which aligns, in name at least, with the ISIS English language media.
Why would Jolani try to deny the existence of SAS?
Perhaps because acknowledging their role would mean that:
- Jolani has no control over factions inside Syria.
- The group was formerly associated with HTS.
- It would demonstrate the growing dissatisfaction among the more hardline Takfiri factions with Jolani’s softening ideology under influence from Western intelligence agencies.
Ultimately, to accept the existence of SAS would shatter the image of Jolani as a strong-arm warlord in control of the Takfiri infested fabric of ‘New Syria’. This could be fatal. As Trump’s envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said recently: “[Jolani or] Sharaa's efforts to promote inclusive governance in Damascus and rebuild relations with Western powers have made him vulnerable to attacks by ‘disaffected extremists’”.
Since the fall of Damascus in December 2024, the attacks against Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Sunni moderates, who reject Takfiri ideology, has been on the increase in ‘New Syria’. It is a reminder of the early chants that epitomised the so-called peaceful protests in Syria—“Alawites to the grave and Christians to Beirut”. In 2015, an Al Jazeera host posed the question, “Do Alawites deserve genocide?” Qatar poured billions of dollarsinto the regime change war against Syria.
Christians and Alawites have been the target of the Takfiri ethnic cleansing project since 2011 backed by the Western regimes and intelligence agencies. While the West cries crocodile tears over the fate of Christians in the region, they arm, fund, and promote the Takfiri factions tasked with their elimination and displacement. King Charles III “was praying“ for Syrian Christians post-Assad. He donated to Syria ruled by Al Qaeda. Is he ignorant of the UK-led regime change operations that are responsible for the devastation, misery, and deprivation in Syria? Or is he complicit?
I spent considerable time with Syrian Christian communities in Syria, under siege and attack by the Turkish-Israeli-US-UK-Arab Gulf State fanatics. See a few of my reports detailing how Christians were deliberately targeted and driven out of the country here, here, here, and here.
The Idlib Project Was a House of Cards Destined to Collapse Eventually
Jolani maintained a very precarious control over the hardline Takfiri factions in Idlib prior to the international coup that toppled the former Syrian Government and plunged Syria into a quagmire of sectarian violence and hatred.
Even in Idlib, Jolani employed the tactic of blaming ISIS for the assassination of dissenting voices among his close circle. From 2023-2024, a “crisis of collaboration and communication with internal and external parties” threatened the stability of HTS. Members of the HTS leadership defected and turned on Jolani. Abu Maria al-Qahtani, a senior leader in HTS, was arrested and later assassinated by a suicide belt attack. Jolani blamed the attack on ISIS. However, ISIS did not claim responsibility. Jolani’s image as a brutal, merciless warlord was greatly magnified by the killing, which benefitted him tremendously and enabled him to maintain control over the Takfiri factions leading up to the coup.
Now, in 2025, with ‘New Syria’ reaching a boiling point of competing ideologies and savagery, how will Jolani manage the explosive situation? He is no longer in Idlib, where his actions were largely hidden from view. Now he is under the scrutiny of the world. Even those who are grooming and protecting him could turn on him at any moment if he does not fulfil their agendas. His own forces are splintering and defecting to ISIS, frustrated at Jolani’s pivot towards Western values. Who will Jolani appease? The US, or the foreign Takfiris, more than 30% of his military? Israel, or the Takfiri Caliphate he promised the extremist factions under his control?
Another Idlib example that may give some insight into the Jolani mindset is the case of 'Saraya Ansar Abu Bakr al Siddiq', a group which challenged HTS dominance until it was allegedly eliminated by Jolani’s forces.
The truth is a little stranger. In March 2020, Turkey and Russia signed the ceasefire agreement for north-west Syria (Idlib) and agreed to conduct joint patrols to secure the M4 arterial road which connects Aleppo to Laakia on the coast. It passed through areas controlled by Nusra Front or HTS.
These patrols were mysteriously targeted by a group calling itself ‘Saraya Ansar Abu Bakr al Siddiq’. Russia stopped participating in the patrols. Then the faction targeted the Turkish patrols and military posts. Turkey stopped the patrols and partially withdrew its forces. The primary beneficiary of these patrol halts was Jolani and Al Qaeda. The organisation disappeared from view as soon as the patrols were successfully prevented, and Jolani had full dominance of the strategically important M4 corridor.
At that time, the head of HTS/Al Qaeda’s security apparatus was Abu Ahmed Hudoud. Now he is rebranded as Anas Khattab, and he is the Minister of Interior in ‘New Syria’. With close ties to Turkish MIT Intelligence apparatus, Khattab was known to have orchestrated many of Al Qaeda’s dirty operations in Idlib.
It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to suggest that Khattab might be recruiting dissatisfied Takfiri factions to conduct ethnic cleansing operations and sectarian savagery. This way, Jolani can appease the hardliners while securing plausible deniability for HTS in the eyes of his Western backers. It enables Jolani to control the Syrian minorities through fear and oppression, while maintaining a facade of distance from the crimes committed.
Just as the West has used Jolani as a proxy to destabilise and shred the pluralist Syrian societal fabric, Jolani is now using proxy Takfiri factions to deepen the sectarian divides that barely existed before 2011.
As evidence of this “gangs and counter-gangs” theory, SAS have published an infographic showing its most recent operations. These include the Dweila Mar Elias Church attack, the execution of two young Druze men, a machine-gun attack on the shrine of Sayyeda Zeinab in Damascus, and the burning of two houses in Aleppo and Hama. The death toll from these attacks is 103: 91 in Damascus, six in Homs, four in Aleppo, one in Tartous, and one in Latakia. Below is a translation of the infographic, originally in Arabic:
Infographic showing SAS' recent operations
On 5 July, huge fires engulfed the Latakia countryside in areas with an Alawite majority population. It is a marginalised sect that has already witnessed some of the worst crimes against Syrian civilians since Jolani took power last year. Once again, SAS took responsibility. Their aim: to expel Alawites from the area and to kill them.
SAS' statement
Sources in Syria have told me the fires are also used to drive out any Alawites sheltering from the murderous gangs in the surrounding forests and mountainous countryside. Suddenly, the Jolani administration announced that it had arrested 16 people suspected of starting the fires in Latakia. Sound familiar?
Videos are simultaneously circulating of HTS arsonists previously setting fire to forests in Qardaha, Latakia, another more recent incident here. As much as Jolani attempts to deflect blame, the social media accounts of his militia betray him.
Video of the Latakia fires
It is worth noting that Jolani’s regime has laid off all Fire Brigade volunteers in Syria if they are not Takfiri, aka White Helmets. He has therefore deprived Syria of its most experienced and genuine firefighters at a time when forest fires traditionally rage through the coastal regions. The multi-million-funded White Helmets, an MI6 construct embedded with Al Qaeda, are nowhere to be seen in the circulating videos. Syrian civilians and farmers appear to be tackling the unprecedented fires alone with bare hands and rudimentary tools.
This, despite claims by former White Helmet chiefRaed Saleh, that an emergency joint operations room had been established and around 90 teams and over 150 vehicles from Turkey and Jordan were battling the fires. He did add that efforts are “hampered by landmines, war remnants, and strong winds”. All this and still 7000 hectares of forestry and farmland have been incinerated. White Helmets are notorious for fabrications that serve the agenda of Al Qaeda in Syria and their external backers. Additionally, assistance from the Russian base in Tartous has been categorically refused by the Jolani regime, according to reports from inside Syria.
On 7 July, fires raged across the coastal region. There are reports of charred bodies being found on the beaches. People are trapped, trying desperately to beat back the flames, calling for help. Nobody is coming to save them. The escape roads for civilians are being blocked by the Jolani militia, leaving Syrians to die in the inferno.
The SAS is not a minor faction. It is operating over an extensive area of Syrian territory. Syria is full of foreign intelligence agency operatives, including MI6, CIA, Turkish MIT, Mossad, and Arab Gulf States. Even Russian surveillance is still active. How can all these intelligence agencies and Jolani’s security apparatus be so incompetent that they cannot apprehend or even identify this bunch of fanatics? “They don’t exist?” Or they are serving the ultimate purpose of all these external and internal players?
Al Ikhbariya Channel in Syria, the now-official channel of Jolani’s regime, hosted three people from the so-called National Reconciliation Committee to discuss the Mar Elias massacre. The presenter resorted to a level of sectarian discourse that was heavily criticised by the Syrian audience, not accustomed to such sectarian dialogue. One guest was repeatedly referred to as ‘Christian’: “Since you are a Christian” and “You, as a Christian”.
One of the guests attempted to lay the blame for the attack on the other minorities facing persecution in Syria—the ‘minority alliance’ of Druze and Alawites. He says “the Christians are being punished” for not joining the alliance and not publicly rejecting the Jolani regime. It is another more cynical way of deflecting blame from the Jolani terror gangs and designed to cause further sectarian strife.
Despite establishing a ‘General Security’ apparatus which is allegedly tasked with investigating the ethnic cleansing pogroms across Syria, Jolani has not prevented a single massacre. A recent investigation by Reuters has exposed Jolani’s involvement in the bloodshed—a fact that was widely known already inside Syria. The General Security officials are invariably reported to be deliberately obstructive by Syrian civilians who have tried to report crimes to them.
Jolani is using these alleged splinter factions to ethnically cleanse Syria of almost all minorities and convert it into a Takfiri-dominated landscape, through theft, forced settlement, and mass displacement. He is being assisted by Western Intelligence agencies and, very possibly, by Briltish Private Military Contractors operating inside Syria since the fall of Damascus. This has been reported to me by sources inside Syria, but there is no hard evidence to date, except one video of an attack against the Aya Sophia church in the Christian town of Al Sqeilbiyyeh. You can clearly hear the world “beautiful” said with a British accent when a gunman takes aim at the church.
This project can be compared to the Nakba of 1948, the Zionist massacres, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes and land. The Zionist militia were also trained in ‘best’ ethnic cleansing practices by ‘sympathetic’ British military officers. Jolani has been shadowed by MI6-linked operatives for years now. They have groomed him for power. He is expected to deliver on the road map designed, not for the benefit of Syria and Syrians, but for the security and expansion of Israel and the Western alliance. It is an alliance seeking to regain dominance in the region and to destroy the Resistance that threatens their neo-colonialist predation, by any means at their disposal.
Father Malatios Shattahi, Director General of the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development at the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, said after the church bombing in Dweila: “We are no longer subjected to individual acts, but rather organized institutional acts, and the state did not protect us".
Clearly, the Mar Elias attack was a trigger for more widespread aggression against Christians in Syria. A video was circulating on social media of graffiti on the wall of a church in the village of Kafrbo in the Hama countryside: “your turn is coming”. A pamphlet was published threatening churches in Hama, Sqeilbiyyeh, Mhardeh, and the Monastery of Saint Kafrbahm. Disturbing videos were made public justifying the bombing of Sunday Mass as the Takfiri war against the ‘infidels’. A Jolani ‘General Security’ official publicly called the crime a ‘martyrdom operation’, elevating the criminals to martyr status—a holy war against apostates. Another General Security militant mocked the victims of the bombing on his Facebook page.
On 6 July, pamphlets were distributed across Syria calling for the massacre of Christians and non-Takfiris. Examples are below:
O people of al-Sham (Syria), burn the bodies of the cross-worshipers, gouge out their eyes, so that al-Sham remains Umayyad, and no unbeliever remains in it.
O sons of the Muslims (Takfiri)
Do not abstain from destroying the homes of the Christians, slaughtering their children, and taking their women.
Their lands are your lawful spoil, and their wealth is your booty.
So hasten to jihad today before tomorrow.
On 7 July, Christian and Alawite residents of Safita, a town inland from Tartous on the coast, received threats from the ‘imaginary’ SAS group.
ISIS flags on sale in Damascus
As a friend in Syria said to me recently: 'When ISIS flags are openly sold in the markets of Damascus, we should not be surprised by these bombings, nor should we wonder where these ISIS elements came from. When the official Ministry of Defence personnel wear ISIS flags on their uniforms, who is really ISIS?"
Collage of ISIS General Security
The Mar Elias attack affected Syrian Christians profoundly. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, John X. Yazigi, delivered a powerful rebuke at the funeral of the victims. He criticised the lukewarm response from Jolani’s representatives and from Jolani himself:
We are an integral component of this nation, and we are here to stay.
Let me remind you: The two Archbishops of Aleppo, Boulos and Youhanna, were kidnapped, and much was said at the time. The Maaloula nuns were also kidnapped. And here we still are. The heinous crime was committed the day before yesterday, and we will remain here.
Abrogating Responsibility and Building a Takfiri State
Jolani has used the scatter technique to attribute blame to the SDF, ISIS, and the Syrian minorities via his media institutions while shielding the true killers within his administration from justice. The Christian victims were barely mourned, marginalised even in death.
Arab political analyst Myriam Charabaty (based in Lebanon) wrote this on X: "HTS is not a protector. It is the very force driving this violence. There is no peace, and there never will be, without resistance. Resistance is not an option. It is the only path".
A Syrian analyst told me:
Everything that happens in terms of violations in Syria is a message to all components and minorities with the aim of imposing a comprehensive demographic change. One that facilitates the reshaping of the region in the future. When discrimination is made between the blood of Syrians, this is a positive indicator for terrorist organisations and a negative indicator for Syrians who do not live by this sectarian code.
What is happening now in Syria is the deliberate recycling of terrorist waste that was defeated and contained by the 14 years of Syrian Allied Resistance against their sectarian barbarism. When ISIS was weakened, it re-emerged under the banner of Jabhat Al Nusra or the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, but the ISIS ideology remained embedded in the minds of the militia. The rebranding campaigns by Western Intelligence agencies facilitate this terrorist survival and renaissance regionally. All Syrian cities and vast swathes of countryside are now infested by these Takfiri cells, with no central control or impediment to their bloodlust.
Some of the bloodiest battles were fought between ISIS and Nusra Front. Yes, they are sworn enemies, and yet many HTS terrorists are defecting to ISIS due to frustration with Jolani’s Western-facing policies, his false promises to liberate Jerusalem, his assurances to Trump of normalisation with Israel, his offer of occupied Golan to the Zionists, his regional pacifism, and chameleonism to preserve his authority in an increasingly chaotic environment. These terrorists, especially foreign Takfiri, do not recognise borders, they did not come to Syria to fight for a ‘democratic state’ but for a borderless Takfiri Caliphate. Jolani now stands in their way.
The collective West and its regional allies claimed, for 14 years, that they were supporting democratic ‘rebels’ to overthrow a dictator. Nobody should be surprised that their intention, all along, was to drag Syria back to a regressive dark age, impose a Takfiri dictatorship and dismantle all semblance of political sovereignty from Syria and Syrians. The blood that is now being shed by their assets in Syria is on their hands. Every single one of the lying, duplicitous politicians, journalists, regime leaders, academics, NGOs and low-grade representatives that sold this concept both to Syrians and to Western populations should be on trial in The Hague.
Lammy and Jolani
As the pamphlets calling for the slaughter of Syrian Christians and minorities were being distributed across Syria, UK’s Foreign Minister David Lammy was shaking hands with Jolani in Damascus and holding meetings with Al Qaeda Foreign Minister, Asaad Al Shaibani (co-founder of Al Qaeda in Syria). As Glenn Jenkins pointed out on X, did Lammy question Jolani about the ‘ISIS’ executions of British Aid workers in 2014? The British Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, said, “they are not Muslims, they are monsters”. They are monsters, agreed, but they are monsters the UK created and are still legitimising—while the monsters continue to burn, rape and pillage Syrian minority communities. Lammy pledged a further £95 million to fund terrorism in Syria. As I said on X, Global Britain polishes the shoes of their terrorist assets in Syria while declaring Palestine Action terrorists for preventing genocide by terrorists in Israel. It's not ‘little Britain’; it's ‘little Israel’.
I will leave you with the words of Maria Saadeh, a Syrian Christian and independent Parliament member before the Takfiri regime came to power:
It seems the shallow cowboy culture has taken over your deep-rooted legacies, selling them out for oil, gas, and rare minerals. You are all destroying humanity with your actions, delivering the ancient and noble people of Syria to slaughter, just as Judas handed over Christ, the very architect of your civilizations and values.
Today, we are ashamed, and all of humanity should be ashamed, that you have empowered internationally recognized terrorists to govern the world’s oldest and most historic cities. What kind of people are you, so ignorant of your own history and devoid of humanity?!
You all united to bring down Great Syria, Sacred Syria—Syria of Palestine and Lebanon, Syria of Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, and Jaffa, and its vast extension.
