Syria says Islamic State plotted New Year’s Eve attacks on churches

Interior Ministry receives information that terror group planned suicide assaults targeting New Year’s celebrations, particularly in Aleppo

By AFP 1 January 2026, 5:13 pm

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Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II leads Christmas celebrations at St. George's Syriac Orthodox Church in the old city of Damascus on December 25, 2025. (Bakr Alkasem / AFP)

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria said Thursday a suicide bomber who killed a security forces member in Aleppo on New Year’s Eve was in the Islamic State group, which planned attacks on churches and gatherings.

ISIS recently increased its attacks in areas of Syria controlled by the Damascus authorities, and was blamed for an attack last month in Palmyra that killed three Americans.

The interior ministry said in a statement it had information that ISIS planned “suicide operations and attacks targeting New Year’s celebrations in a number of governorates, particularly the city of Aleppo, by targeting churches and civilian gathering spots,” prompting security to be tightened.

In Aleppo’s Bab al-Faraj neighborhood, one officer “became suspicious of a person who was later found to be affiliated with Daesh,” the statement said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

While being interrogated, the man “opened fire, resulting in the martyrdom of one of the police officers, and then he blew himself up, wounding two officers while they were trying to intervene to arrest him.”

On December 13, two US soldiers and an American civilian were killed in an attack Washington blamed on a lone ISIS gunman in Syria’s Palmyra.

Christian Syrians hold a march in the northeastern city of Qamishli on June 25, 2025, to express support for families of victims of a suicide attack on a church in Damascus, which killed 25 people and wounded dozens. (Delil Souleiman / AFP)

In retaliation, American forces struck scores of ISIS targets in Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the US strikes killed five members of the jihadist group.

Syrian authorities have also carried out several operations against ISIS since then, saying on December 25 they had killed a senior leader of the group.

In November, during a visit by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Washington, Syria officially joined the US-led coalition against ISIS.

Sharaa is an Islamist ruler and a former jihadist whose group fought ISIS at the height of his country’s civil war.

Sharaa’s rule since the December 2024 fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad has raised concerns among minorities, who have fallen victim to deadly sectarian violence over the past year.

Civilians among the Alawite community to which Assad belonged were massacred on the coast in March, and there were clashes in Druze-majority Sweida province in July.

In June, a suicide bombing in a Damascus church killed 25 people.

Syria’s authorities blamed ISIS, but a shadowy Sunni extremist group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility.

Analysts have said Saraya Ansar al-Sunna serves as a front for the ISIS group.