DAMASCUS (Dispatches) –
 Intelligence officials in Syria’s new de facto government thwarted a plan by the Daesh group to set off a bomb at a Shia shrine in the Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, state media reported Saturday.
State news agency SANA reported, citing an unnamed official in the General Intelligence Service, that members of the Daesh cell planning the attack were arrested. It quoted the official as saying that the intelligence service is “putting all its capabilities to stand in the face of all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their spectrums.”
Sayyida Zeinab has been the site of past attacks on Shia pilgrims by Daesh.
In 2023, a motorcycle planted with explosives detonated in Sayyida Zeinab, killing at least six people and wounding dozens a day before the Shia holy day of Ashoura.
The announcement that the attack had been thwarted appeared to be another attempt by the country’s new leaders to reassure religious minorities, including those seen as having been supporters of the former government of Bashar Assad.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the former militant group that led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad last month and is now the de facto ruling party in the country, is an insurgent group that formerly had ties with Al-Qaeda.
The group later split from Al-Qaeda, and HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa has preached religious coexistence since assuming power in Damascus.
Also Saturday, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati arrived in Damascus to meet with al-Sharaa.
Relations between the two countries had been strained under Assad, with Lebanon’s political factions deeply divided between those supporting and opposing Assad’s rule.