Suicide Bomber in Syria Kills Security Officer in New Year’s Eve Attack

New Year’s Eve celebrations in Aleppo in northwestern Syria were violently disrupted late on Wednesday after security forces tried to arrest a man at a checkpoint spotted wearing an explosive belt who then detonated it, killing one officer and injuring two others, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry.

The bomber, who has not yet been identified, “most likely” had “ideological or organizational” links to the Islamic State terrorist group and was thwarted while attempting to infiltrate a Christian area in the center of Aleppo, the Interior Ministry spokesman, Nour al-Din al-Baba, said in an interview with state-owned news media. Mr. al-Baba, without citing evidence of the attacker’s affiliation or motivation, said he may have been seeking to target the nearby Church of the Forty Martyrs, based on preliminary information that he did not detail.

The attack in Aleppo came despite heightened security throughout Syria as security forces had braced for violence, following the bombing of a mosque in Homs in the western part of the country last week, and other recent attacks, and as the still-fragile nation celebrated its second New Year’s Eve since the rebellion that toppled the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad last December.

Read more: New York Times