Qualla: 2025 Homs Mosque Bombing

2025 Homs Mosque Bombing: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Friday prayers had just been called at the Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib Mosque in Homs's Wadi al-Dahab neighborhood when the explosion tore through the western wall. It was 26 December 2025, barely a year after the fall of the Assad regime, and the blast killed eight people and wounded eighteen more in what became one of the deadliest sectarian attacks of Syria's turbulent transition. The mosque served the Alawite community -- a religious minority that had dominated Syrian politics for decades under the Assads and now found itself vulnerable in ways it had not been for generations.

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2025 Homs Mosque Bombing: Between the Call and the Prayer

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An eyewitness told Al Jazeera Arabic that the explosion struck between the adhan, the call to prayer, and the iqama, the second call that signals the start of communal worship. That narrow window -- perhaps five minutes, when worshippers are settling into rows, greeting neighbors...

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2025 Homs Mosque Bombing: A City on Edge

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Homs had been fracturing along sectarian lines for months. After decades of Assad rule -- during which Alawites held disproportionate power in the military and intelligence services -- the community found itself a target of reprisals. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights docum...

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2025 Homs Mosque Bombing: Condemnation and Fury

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reaction was swift and layered. Syrian government ministries -- Foreign Affairs, Endowments, Interior, Justice, Information -- issued coordinated statements condemning what they called a cowardly terrorist act. The Supreme Alawite Islamic Council described the bombing as part...

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2025 Homs Mosque Bombing: The Streets Respond

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two days after the bombing, on 28 December, thousands of Alawites took to the streets in Tartus and Latakia. Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council had called for the demonstrations, and the turnout was massive -- a display of grief and defiance that quickly ...

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2025 Homs Mosque Bombing: Wounds Within Wounds

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Syria's transition was always going to be perilous. The Assad family had governed for over five decades, and the sectarian architecture of their rule -- Alawite officers in the military, Alawite agents in the intelligence services -- meant that the fall of the regime did not simp...

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