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Isis has claimed responsibility for a deadly shooting at a mosque in Oman’s capital Muscat, the first time that the Islamist jihadist group has claimed an attack on the small Gulf nation.
Six people were killed and dozens injured in the attack at a Shia mosque in the Wadi Kabir district of the capital on Tuesday. The deaths, which included a police officer, four Pakistani nationals and an Indian national, were confirmed by local police and the two nation’s embassies in the country.
Experts said it was the first attack claimed by Isis in traditionally stable Oman, and the first time in eight years that the jihadis have boasted of launching an attack in the oil-rich Gulf region.
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a research fellow and Isis expert at the Middle East Forum, a US think-tank, noted how the attack in Oman was highly unusual and that there had been “very little evidence of jihadist activity in the country in the past”.
Hundreds of thousands of expatriates from south Asia live and work in Oman, which has a population of fewer than 5mn. While Oman lacks the huge oil reserves of its wealthier neighbours, it is important to US foreign policy as an important interlocutor with Iran.
A video released on Tuesday watermarked with the logo of the Islamist terror group’s Amaq news agency claimed responsibility for the Muscat attack, and showed gunmen firing from a raised position. Telegram channels sympathetic to Isis also circulated the video.
Tamimi said that Isis had characterised Shia Muslims as apostates, who “should be attacked worldwide wherever possible”. Shia Muslims, who are a minority in Oman, are at present observing the holy month of Muharram.
The three attackers were killed, Omani police said in a statement, without elaborating on their identities or motives.
Isis has been beaten back since the height of its self-proclaimed caliphate in the mid-2010s when it surged from the chaos of Syria’s civil war to wrest brutal control of big cities in eastern Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The jihadis no longer control territory and their leaders have been hounded by a US-led coalition, which includes the Gulf states.
But its supporters and affiliates are still perpetrating attacks worldwide: its Afghan branch Isis-K this year killed 143 people at a concert hall in Moscow and has been linked to bombings in Iran that killed almost 100.
Isis affiliates last struck the Gulf in 2016 when suicide bombers attempted four attacks across Saudi Arabia.
Additional reporting by Raya Jalabi in Beirut
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