While Syrian authorities quickly blamed the Islamic State for the June 22, 2025 suicide bombing that killed 25 Christians and injured 63 others during Divine Liturgy at Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus, members of Syria’s Christian community allege the attack was a government-orchestrated false flag meant to terrorize minorities while preserving plausible deniability.
Christian sources are openly challenging the official narrative. “This statement by the government is a lie, and the Julani government’s narrative should not be conveyed because we give them legitimacy,” one source said.
The reference to “Julani” invokes President al-Sharaa’s former nom de guerre, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, under which he fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—the group that later became ISIS. Many Syrian Christians believe the current president is the same jihadist leader once wanted by the U.S. with a $10 million bounty.
Sources further allege that “more than one source has confirmed the bomber was a member of General Security affiliated with al-Julani,” suggesting the attack was not carried out by external terrorists but by the regime’s own security forces.
On the ground, many Christians believe the bombing was orchestrated by the Damascus government, now under the control of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist group. “This is how all people think in Syria,” one source remarked.
Such accusations reflect a deep erosion of trust in the regime’s claim to protect religious minorities. One Christian described the bombing as “full-blown terrorism represented by the empty terrorist head of the Syrian regime,” again referring to al-Sharaa as the former jihadist commander. For many, the current government is simply a rebranded version of the extremist threat that has long plagued them.
Doubts have also been raised about the group that claimed responsibility for the bombing. “A group calling itself Saraya Ansar al-Sunna claimed the attack,” one Christian source noted, “but based on our monitoring, it was only founded last February.” They concluded the group was likely “a fake page created to claim responsibility for acts carried out by terrorists within the government.”
This assessment aligns with Syrian analysts who describe Saraya Ansar al-Sunna as an obscure outfit that emerged following the regime’s collapse in late 2024. Believed to include defectors from HTS and other jihadist factions, it is suspected of being either an independent offshoot or a front for ISIS, reportedly led by former HTS and Hurras al-Din commanders.
The timing has raised particular suspicion: a new group surfaces just months before the worst church attack in over a decade, conveniently providing cover for regime involvement while maintaining the illusion of an external jihadist threat.
Syria’s current government, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), officially designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2018, has well-documented roots in jihadist extremism. Formed in 2017 through a merger of several factions, its core was Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate until 2016. Despite attempts to rebrand as moderate, HTS has maintained its extremist character.
The most damning evidence of HTS’s enduring extremism came during the March 2025 massacres of Alawites along the coast. From March 6 to 17, over 1,000 people were killed in systematic sectarian violence, including at least 745–800 Alawite civilians. Armed groups affiliated with the government reportedly went door-to-door asking residents their religious affiliation, then executed them if they were Alawite.
Multiple human rights organizations have documented direct government complicity in the March 2025 massacres. CNN’s investigation revealed government-aligned forces carrying out summary executions, looting, arson, and sectarian slurs, some of which were filmed and posted online, with fighters openly calling for “ethnic cleansing.”
Reports surfaced of HTS-affiliated groups using mosques to declare that “killing Alawites is obligatory,” with supporting videos circulating on social media. While the regime claimed to be fighting pro-Assad remnants, it increasingly relied on external militias—foreign jihadists and Sunni fighters under Turkish protection, who deliberately targeted Alawite civilians.
The Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre noted that since early 2025, reports of Alawite civilians being killed by “unknown gunmen” have circulated weekly, with victims consistently targeted for their sectarian identity, not for any role in the former regime. The scale and pattern of violence indicate these were not isolated incidents but part of a broader, systematic campaign against minorities.
Given the documented pattern of sectarian violence by HTS and the direct involvement of government-affiliated forces in massacres of religious minorities, Syrian Christians’ suspicions about regime complicity in the church bombing are entirely justified. Despite public promises of tolerance, the HTS-led government has actively enabled or participated in mass sectarian violence. When a regime rooted in al-Qaeda has already orchestrated the slaughter of one religious minority, its claim that it would never target another loses all credibility.
The swift attribution of the Mar Elias bombing to ISIS, coupled with the government’s history of sponsoring sectarian attacks, points to a pattern that cannot be ignored. For Syria’s remaining 400,000 Christians, down from 1.5 million before the war, these allegations are not mere speculation but an existential warning. If the very government claiming to protect them is in fact responsible for the attacks, then there is no way that Christians can survive in Syria.
