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.
Mr. al-Baba said that the authorities had broadly deployed security forces around churches and Christian gatherings across Syria during Christmas and New Year celebrations. He said the authorities were working to determine the identity of the attacker, how he had obtained the explosive belt and his potential connections to terror cells.
The Islamic State was also blamed for an attack earlier this month that killed three Americans, two soldiers and a civilian interpreter, in Palmyra. The incident, which Islamic State did not claim, prompted a military response from the United States and highlighted the challenges for the Syrian government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, as the fractured nation emerges from nearly 14 years of civil war.
"While the internal security forces were carrying out their duties in securing the celebrations of the people in Aleppo, and being the watchful eye and the fortified shield, one of the terrorist elements was spotted trying to break through internal security barriers," said Azzam al-Gharib, the governor of Aleppo, in a post on social media. Mr. al-Gharib added that the situation was now "fully under control."
At least eight people were killed and about 20 others injured in an explosion during prayer services at the mosque in Homs last Friday. Ansar al-Sunna, which analysts say is a splinter group of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for that blast and said it had worked with "jihadists from another group" but did not name it. The group previously had claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in a church in the capital, Damascus, in June, that killed 25 people.
Abu Khaled al-Makhzoumi, the spokesman for Ansar al-Sunna, said his group was not involved with the attack in Aleppo on Wednesday, in response to a request for comment. "But we support whoever did it, and we believe it's the Islamic State," he said.