Terrorists opened fire on a Shiite mosque outside of Muscat, Oman, on Monday, launching a ten-hour-long siege that concluded on Tuesday with at least nine dead.
An account on the encrypted messaging service Telegram alleging to belong to the Islamic State took responsibility for the attack. Muslims are currently observing the holiday of Ashura, which for Shiites represents the date of the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad. Sunni Muslims also observe Ashura, but for them it is a celebration marking the end of Noah’s time on the ark and Moses parting the Red Sea, rather than a holiday of mourning. The Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist organization, has for over a decade targeted Shiite Muslims in addition to non-Muslim “infidels” with its attacks.
Oman, separated by mountains from its turbulent neighbor Yemen, rarely documents jihadist terror attacks and its government regularly cooperates on counter-terrorism operations with the United States. The rare massacre on Monday suggests a potential expansion of Islamic State targets and follows a growing number of ISIS-related incidents in Syria, Iraq, and Russia, among other countries.
According to the Emirati newspaper The National, at least three attackers opened fire on the Ali bin Abi Talib mosque in Wadi Al Kabir on Monday night. Eyewitnesses described the shooters being situated on a nearby rooftop and “raining” fire indiscriminately on worshippers, using spotlights to obscure themselves. Once Omani police deployed, the terrorists spent hours shooting back and forth with them until police deemed that all known attackers were eliminated.
The claim of responsibility from the Islamic State stated that three of its “suicide” attackers were responsible for the terrorism.
The National documented at least nine deaths and mixed reports on the total injured, which included a high number of foreign nationals. The Royal Oman Police documented 28 people killed, while Pakistan’s ambassador to Oman told the newspaper that at least 50 Pakistanis alone were injured. Some unverified reports also described some worshippers being taken hostage, though those have yet to be corroborated at press time.
Eyewitnesses described the attackers as native Arabic speakers who repeatedly chanted jihadist slogans.
“The sniper was chanting loudly as he shot at us. It was in pure Arabic – not someone who would have learnt Arabic – and he shouted: ‘You non-believers, this is your end!'” one survivor, identified as Pakistani mosque volunteer Shaandar Bukhari, told the National.
“I saw a man in a white T-shirt holding an automatic rifle,” he said. “He was looking away from me and then I got a chill down my spine when I saw two kids taking shelter between a car and the wall of the mosque … I picked them up and literally threw them into the mosque. Their father was badly wounded. [He] did not think he would make it and kept asking us to save his children.”
Bukhari, who is currently hospitalized, said the man died.
The National noted that such incidents are rare, alarming neighbors around the mosque who authorities ordered to shelter in place until the end of the attack.
“We have never heard of something like this happening here, not in the 40 years I have lived in Muscat,” a local teacher identified as Salma Ahmed said.
While located in a part of the world considered a hotbed of jihadist activity, Oman has not been home to any large-scale terrorist organizations and has documented few such disturbances. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2022 report on terrorism for Oman, the latest edition of the annual assessment, the only notable “terrorist incident” documented in Oman that year was an attack in which a “third-country national violent extremist followed a U.S. citizen to his apartment building in Muscat and attacked and injured him with a knife.” The attacker was later deported.
Nonetheless, the State Department noted that “Oman recognizes the need to improve its counterterrorism capabilities and the value of U.S. counterterrorism, military, and law enforcement training and assistance,” describing the “rugged mountainous terrain along Oman’s border with Yemen” as a notable challenge.
Yemen has been in the throes of a civil war for a decade as a result of the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi terrorist group capturing its national capital, Sana’a, and relegating the legitimate government of the country to the southern port city of Aden. The Houthis have since become an international threat after launching a campaign against global commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which their leadership claim is a necessary response to Israel’s self-defense operations on allied jihadist organization Hamas.
The Islamic State posed a global jihadist threat for much of the 2010s, establishing a “caliphate” headquartered in Raqqa, Syria, in 2014 and taking over large territories in that country and Iraq. The “caliphate” fell in 2017, but ISIS continues to pose a threat there and has since expanded to nations such as Afghanistan, Russia, the Philippines, Iran, and Mozambique.