Syrian authorities have arrested an alleged Islamic State commander accused of planning a foiled attack targeting a Shiite Muslim shrine near Damascus, state media reported Saturday.
Authorities arrested "Abu al-Hareth al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organisation", said state news agency SANA, citing an unidentified intelligence official and using an Arabic acronym for IS.
He was "behind the planning of a number of operations", SANA reported, adding that "the cell that was thwarted in its plan to attack the Sayyida Zeinab shrine" was working under his direction.
Last month, Syrian authorities said they foiled an IS attempt to blow up the shrine, Syria's most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, located south of Damascus.
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested IS cell.
It was the first time the new Damascus authorities said they had foiled an IS attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday that the man arrested is "an Iraqi national who was one of the second-tier commanders in IS and spent his recent years" in the Badia desert region.
Iran-backed guards used to be deployed at the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, but fled in December shortly before Sunni Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, toppling president Bashar al-Assad.
Over the years, Shiite shrines have been a frequent target of attacks by Sunni extremists of the IS group, both in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
IS seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of Syria's civil war, declaring a cross-border "caliphate" in 2014.
US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria territorially defeated its proto-state in 2019, but the jihadists have maintained a presence in the country's vast desert.
(AFP)
AFP
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