Blast kills religious leader in Damascus suburb

A Shia Muslim imam who served at Syria's revered Sayyida Zeinab shrine in Damascus's southern suburbs was killed in a bombing on Friday.

Imam "Farhan Hassan al-Mansour was killed in a bomb blast... in the Sayyida Zeinab area", state television reported.

Syria's interior ministry said the "assassination" represented a "dangerous escalation within a pattern targeting religious and social symbols in an attempt to provoke strife and undermine societal stability".

It vowed the "crime will not go unpunished", and said investigations were underway to find the perpetrators.

The Shia community's highest spiritual authority in Syria said in a statement on Facebook that Mansour was killed when "his car was targeted with an explosive device".

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the blast came after Mansour left the shrine, without saying who was responsible.

Shias are estimated to number just 300,000 in Sunni-majority Syria, and are mainly concentrated around Damascus, as well as in Homs, Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

Religious minorities have expressed increased safety concerns in Syria since Islamists took power in December 2024 after overthrowing longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, who was backed by Shia-majority Iran.

The Shia community quickly moved to support the new authorities and senior figures last year met President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has pledged to protect minorities in the multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic country.

But last year saw massacres of Syrian Alawites in the community's coastal heartland, sectarian bloodshed involving the Druze minority in the south, and a suicide bombing at an Orthodox church in Damascus.

In December, at least eight people were killed in a bomb blast at a mosque in an Alawite area of the central city of Homs, sparking protests.

Last July, influential Shia cleric Sheikh Rassul Shahud was killed in central Syria, with the faith's highest body in the country decrying his "assassination".

In February last year, Syrian authorities said they had arrested an alleged Islamic State group commander accused of planning a foiled attack targeting the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, Syria's most-visited Shia pilgrimage site.

Pro-Iran groups used to be heavily entrenched in the Sayyida Zeinab district before Assad's ousting.