Suicide bomber attack on church in Syria kills at least 20 people
At least 20 people have been killed and 52 more are injured after a 'terrorist attack' on a Greek Orthodox church in the Syrian capital on Sunday, according to the country's health ministry.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Syria's Ministry of Interior Affairs told CNN that it was carried out by a 'suicide bomber affiliated with the terrorist organization ISIS.'
He opened fire on the congregation of Mar Elias Church in Damascus, before 'detonating himself using an explosive vest,' the ministry said in a statement.
A mass was being held at the church at the time of the attack, according to Syria's state news agency SANA.
A video circulating on Syrian social media from inside the church shows dead bodies, significant destruction, shattered glass and broken chairs in the area where mass was being held, with blood visible throughout the scene.
Syria's civil defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, said emergency teams were working to transfer the bodies to hospitals and secure the area.
'The treacherous hand of evil struck' on Sunday, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch said in a statement, writing that 'an explosion occurred at the entrance of the church, resulting in the deaths of numerous martyrs and causing injuries to many others who were inside the church or in its immediate vicinity.'
'We offer our prayers for the repose of the souls of the martyrs, for the healing of the wounded, and for the consolation of our grieving faithful. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to our faith and, through that steadfastness, our rejection of all fear and intimidation,' the church said.
The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, expressed 'outrage' at the 'heinous crime,' his office said in a statement.
'Mr. Pedersen calls on all to unite in rejecting terrorism, extremism, incitement and the targeting of any community in Syria. He sends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and his hope for the recovery of those injured,' the statement said.
The United States' Special Envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, called the attack an act of 'cowardice,' saying in a statement that it has 'no place in the new tapestry of integrated tolerance and inclusion that Syrians are weaving.'
The foreign ministries of Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, Greece, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands also spoke out in condemnation of the attack.
CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
26 minutes ago
- CNN
What is the Strait of Hormuz and why is it so significant?
While there have been no major disruptions to the global oil supply so far, the attacks on Iran – by Israel and then the US – have rattled investors, sending oil futures soaring by around 10%, among fears Iran could retaliate by disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. From the perspective of the global economy, there are few places as strategically important. The waterway, located between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. It's the only way to ship crude from the oil-rich Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Iran controls its northern side. About 20 million barrels of oil, about one-fifth of daily global production, flow through the strait every day, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which called the channel a 'critical oil chokepoint.' On Sunday evening, following US airstrikes on three of Iran's nuclear facilities, Brent crude, the global benchmark, briefly surged above $80 per barrel, according to Refinitiv data, the first time that's happened since January. Before the conflict, prices had largely hovered between $60 and $75 a barrel since August 2024. Brent last traded at $78.2 per barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, was at $75.06. Whether oil prices will climb further now depends on Iran's response. Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at energy investment firm Tortoise Capital, told CNN that a potential disruption to the Iran-controlled sea route would cause oil prices to surge toward $100 per barrel. A functioning Strait of Hormuz is 'absolutely essential' to the health of the global economy, he said. A prominent adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has already called for the closure of the Strait. 'Following America's attack on the Fordow nuclear installation, it is now our turn,' warned Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a well-known conservative voice who has previously identified himself as a 'representative' for Khamenei. Geographic leverage over global shipping gives Iran the 'capacity to cause a shock in oil markets, drive up oil prices, drive inflation, collapse Trump's economic agenda,' Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran expert and editor of the Amwaj news outlet, told CNN. When it comes to moving oil, the Strait is actually much narrower than its 21-mile official width. The navigable shipping lanes for massive supertankers are only about two miles wide in each direction, requiring vessels to pass through both Iranian and Omani territorial waters. A closure of the Strait will be particularly detrimental to Asian economies which rely on the crude oil and natural gas shipped through the route. The EIA estimates that 84% of the crude oil and 83% of the liquefied natural gas that moved through the Strait of Hormuz last year went to Asian markets. China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, sourced 5.4 million barrels per day through the Strait of Hormuz in the first quarter this year, while India and South Korea imported 2.1 million and 1.7 million barrels per day, respectively, according to the EIA's estimates. In comparison, the US and Europe imported just 400,000 and 500,000 barrels per day, respectively, in the same period, according to the EIA. On Sunday, India's Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri sought to reassure jittery investors on X that the country has 'diversified' its oil supplies in the past few years. On Sunday, India's Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said on X that the country has 'diversified' its oil supplies in the past few years. 'A large volume of our supplies do not come through the Strait of Hormuz now. Our Oil Marketing Companies have supplies of several weeks and continue to receive energy supplies from several routes,' he said. 'We will take all necessary steps to ensure stability of supplies of fuel to our citizens.' CNN's John Towfighi, Nadeen Ebrahim, and Rhea Mogul contributed reporting.
CNN
32 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump floats Iran ‘regime change' even as the true impact of US strikes is far from clear
President Donald Trump's onslaught of Iran's nuclear plants was the most violent moment of his two terms and America's 46-year showdown with the Islamic Republic. Flush with the spoils of battle, he already seems to be toying with the idea of regime change. But the reality of whether Trump truly destroyed Iran's nuclear ambitions and the consequences of his aggression are far more ambiguous than his bullish claims of victory would suggest. The president insisted Sunday that the damage to three nuclear sites struck by the US was 'monumental.' He posted on social media that 'the hits were hard and accurate.' Round-the-world raids by B-2 stealth bombers out of Missouri using never-before-deployed 'bunker-busting' bombs demonstrated the unique reach of the US military and its continued potency despite Trump administration chaos at the Pentagon. If Trump's order eradicated Iran's nuclear program, or set it back years or decades, he could claim a legacy achievement that lifted an existential threat to Israel. If Iranian power is neutered, the Middle East could be transformed. The president effectively tried to bomb Iran to the negotiating table and to an effective surrender of its capacity to enrich uranium. But it's a long shot whether humiliation by an enemy Tehran regards as the 'Great Satan' will convince it to sue for peace. And questions are mounting over whether the strikes over the weekend truly 'obliterated' all of Iran's nuclear infrastructure as Trump claims. And the president has still not shared the intelligence that convinced him that Iran was 'a few weeks away' from building a nuclear weapon — even though US spy agencies assessed it had not yet decided to do so. It is now vital to establish whether Iran salvaged any enriched nuclear material or even relocated it ahead of the US strikes. If it did, Trump's bid to eliminate its path to a weapon could instead catalyze a race by Tehran to build a rudimentary device that would leave the world a far more dangerous place. 'Anybody who says that they have any idea whatsoever about whether these raids did anything other than create a big boom and a lot of dust has no idea what they're talking about,' Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN's Kasie Hunt on 'State of the Union' on Sunday. In the meantime, everyone is waiting on Iran's military revenge, with the Middle East on alert for new turmoil — and Americans potentially in the firing line. Tehran's decisions will be fateful. A slide into yet another open-ended Middle East war is not inevitable. But history shows that American attempts to reshape the region almost always fail to capitalize on 'shock and awe' openings. Amir-Saeid Iravani, the Islamic Republic's envoy to the United Nations, said on Sunday that 'the timing, nature and the scale of Iran's proportionate response will be decided by its armed forces.' There's growing uncertainty, meanwhile, about the president's intentions. Vice President JD Vance insisted on Sunday that the US wasn't at war with Iran or seeking to topple its leaders. But Trump on Sunday evening raised the possibility of mission creep, asking on Truth Social, 'Why wouldn't there be a Regime change???' That was likely music to the ears of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The situation inside Iran's leadership remains opaque. The country was already in a period of transition as the long rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei enters its sunset. But Israel's dismantling of Iran's regional power by crushing its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and now America's blow against its nuclear aspirations, could foment unpredictable political forces. It's unlikely that any loosening of the clerical regime's control would result in the more benign leadership that the US and Israel would prefer, and which millions of more moderate Iranians crave. Instead, political upheaval could bring even greater domestic repression. And any signs of state collapse in a nation twice the size of Iraq could send shockwaves throughout the region and across the globe. America's latest plunge back into the Middle East is already having profound political reverberations back home. Top Republicans heaped praise on what they see as Trump's strength, clarity and daring. But despite his deep bond with his base, some influential right-wing influencers fear he could be driving the MAGA movement into a quagmire. And a president with autocratic instincts who is severely straining the rule of law and the Constitution and is using his power to punish his perceived enemies has now led the US into a potential new conflict on a hunch without making any case to the public and after ignoring Congress's power to declare war. This cascade of uncertainties in the aftermath of Trump's strikes underline that he gave up total control of this new crisis as soon as US bunker busters dropped on the Fordow nuclear plant. The resolution of this clash with Iran — a seat of civilization laced with historic, sectarian, religious and political fault lines and a resentment of perceived US colonialism — is unlikely to be as clean as the decision to send a squadron of B-2 bombers around the globe to enforce the impulses of an American strongman. The next move probably belongs to Iran. Depending on the state of its military after days of pounding Israeli airstrikes, Tehran has options. It could target vast US military bases and assets in the region. It might close the Strait of Hormuz to spark a global energy crisis. It could send missiles into the oil fields of US allies. It might try to stage terror attacks against US interests in the region, or even in the American homeland. Each of these options comes with high risks. It may be counterproductive, for instance, for Tehran to close shipping lanes that would slow its own oil exports to China and Russia, its nominal allies. But each of these steps could also draw Trump deeper into a direct confrontation with Iran and a full-scale war — showing the limits of his ability to control a cycle of escalation. Vance told ABC News' 'This Week' that if Iran gave up its nuclear program 'peacefully' then it would find a willing partner in the US, but if it hit back against US troops, it would be met with 'overwhelming force.' But a president who vowed to avoid new wars sounds increasingly warlike. In his social media post announcing the strikes on Saturday, Trump called on Iran to negotiate with the US over the complete end of its nuclear program. But his subsequent address to the nation was far more belligerent, warning, 'There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left.' The possibility of deepening hostilities therefore seems acute. This is not least because a regime that defined itself for nearly half a century through antipathy to the US may perceive an existential need to show strength. Still, a resort to all-out warfare by Iran could offer an opening for the US or Israel to move toward a regime decapitation strategy — despite the grave risks of turning Iran into a failed state. The exact state of Iran's remaining nuclear capability will be a top issue in the coming days. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was noticeably far less bullish in immediate assessments of the results of Saturday's raids than Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. New battle damage assessments carried out by surveillance and other forms of intelligence could decide whether Trump may order follow-up raids that could further exacerbate tensions. Early independent examinations of the aftermath of the strikes suggest that the damage to one of the three key sites — Isfahan, which was targeted by US cruise missiles — was restricted to aboveground structures. Unlike the other two Iranian facilities targeted in the operation, B-2 bombers did not drop massive 'bunker-buster' bombs on the Isfahan facility, multiple sources told CNN. 'This is an incomplete strike,' said Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who has closely reviewed commercial satellite imagery of the strike sites. 'If this is all there is, here's what left: the entire stockpile of 60% uranium, which was stored at Isfahan in tunnels that are untouched.' Himes warned that Iran could have moved some enriched uranium out of Fordow before the strikes. 'You have got the possibility — and I will stress possibility here — that there's a lot of highly enriched uranium sitting underneath a hornet-mad regime that has decided that the only way we're going to forestall this in the future is to actually sprint towards a nuclear weapon,' Himes said. If that is the case, Trump will have created a threat to the US and Israel that will rumble on for years to come. 'I think the more interesting thing other than retaliation, is reconstitution,' Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN's Fareed Zakaria. 'What lessons did the Iranians draw? It's quite possible they will decide that this never would have happened had they had nuclear weapons. So I think it's possible their retaliation is relatively modest. And what they really want to do is put themselves on a trajectory where some years down the road, when there's another crisis, they're in a different position.' 'So, this may not be quite as neat as we think. This could actually play out not just over weeks and months, but over many years.' Washington, meanwhile, is already buzzing with a familiar spectacle of officials, experts and pundits all making logical cases for why Trump was right to act, why the mission succeeded and how Iran could best serve its interests with a restrained response. But as the long list of lost US wars in the late 20th century and 21st century attests, things are almost never so simple.
CNN
35 minutes ago
- CNN
Iran's nuclear facilities have been smashed, but the race toward a bomb may be gathering pace
US President Donald Trump quickly heralded the US strikes on Iran as a 'spectacular military success,' saying the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities were 'totally obliterated.' Western military sources tell CNN it's still too early to fully assess the damage wrought by more than a dozen US bunker buster bombs, plus an array of Tomahawk cruise missiles, slamming into Iran's main nuclear facilities. But even if Trump's characterization turns out to be accurate, the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities may not mean the end of the Iranian nuclear threat. Far from it. For years, hard-line voices inside the Islamic Republic have been calling for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against exactly this kind of overwhelming attack. Even as Iran continues to insist its nuclear program is for strictly peaceful purposes, those calls will now inevitably have been bolstered and the nuclear hard-liners may finally get their way. Ominously, Iranian officials are already publicly hinting at pulling out of a key treaty – the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT – designed to monitor and prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons. 'The NPT is not able to protect us, so why a country like Iran, or other countries interested to have a peaceful nuclear energy, should rely on NPT,' Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a conference in Istanbul. Other Iranian lawmakers have called for the Islamic Republic to formally withdraw from the treaty, in what would likely be interpreted as a virtual confirmation of Iranian intent to build a nuclear weapon. Of course, intent is different than capacity. And nuclear capacity is likely to be a big issue in the immediate aftermath of the US strikes. As the latest satellite images appear to confirm, being struck with more than a dozen bunker buster bombs will have seriously impeded, if not destroyed, Iran's nuclear program. But if there is political will, nuclear enrichment facilities can eventually be repaired or rebuilt, while Iran's technical know-how survives, despite the targeting by Israel of multiple Iranian nuclear scientists. Meanwhile, officials at the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, say they are uncertain of the whereabouts of the nuclear material Iran has already manufactured, including the large amounts of uranium-235 enriched to 60%, which is very close to weapons-grade levels. Iranian state media says the three nuclear sites struck by the United States – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – were 'evacuated' beforehand, raising the possibility that some or all of that material is being stored elsewhere, possibly in a secret facility, unknown to nuclear inspectors. None of this dangerous nuclear uncertainty is what Trump seems to have bargained for. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East,' he announced after the US strikes, 'must now make peace.' But with the entire region now braced for more Iranian retaliatory strikes – on Israel, US military bases or key shipping lanes, such as the Strait of Hormuz – peacemaking seems vanishingly distant. 'Our talks with Iran were a real window of opportunity,' one European diplomat insisted to CNN, referring to the brief meetings held between European and Iranian officials in Geneva on Friday. 'But the Americans have now slammed that window shut,' the diplomat added.
