[Today’s Prayer] 30 soldiers killed in Syrian bus explosion... “IS is responsible”

(Istanbul = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kim Dong-ho = On the 9th (local time), a bus explosion suspected to be a terrorist attack occurred in the western Syrian city of Homs, resulting in dozens of casualties.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the Syrian civil war, and Iran's semi-official Mehr News Agency, a bomb exploded on a bus carrying military soldiers passing by a gas station, killing 14 soldiers and injuring 19 others.

Authorities reportedly determined that the explosion was the work of the extremist militant group Islamic State (IS).

In Homs, about 300 people were killed or injured in a terrorist attack on a military school in October last year.

At that time, it was reported that at least 80 people were killed and 240 injured in an unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) attack targeting a military school graduation ceremony.

Syrian authorities did not name the perpetrator of the attack at the time, but stated that it was "the work of rebels supported by international armed forces."

The Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, when President Bashar al-Assad suppressed the pro-democracy protests in the country, sparked by the aftermath of the 'Arab Spring'. The Assad regime's government forces won thanks to Russia's intervention in 2015, but it has not yet ended. It didn't work.

IS took advantage of this civil war to rise to power in eastern Syria and then fall, but it is strengthening its presence again with the recent terrorist attack in Iran at the memorial service for Commander Qassem Soleimani of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force.

The U.S. military is stationing 900 troops in Syria under the pretext of fighting IS.

Source: Yonhap News

“And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:16-18)

Heavenly Father who desires to save all peoples, we hear news that dozens of people were killed in a bus explosion suspected to be a terrorist attack in Homs, a city in western Syria. It is believed that this explosion was caused by the extremist militant group Islamic State (IS), and it is said that about 300 people were killed or injured in a terrorist attack last year.

Please have mercy on the Syrian people who have suffered from constant civil war and terrorism since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, which resulted in the bloody suppression of pro-democracy protests in 2011, sparked by the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Please comfort the families of the soldiers who died in this explosion, and baptize them with the Holy Spirit by giving them life-giving repentance as the gospel is spread among broken hearts with no place to hope in the unchanging Syria.

As people believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, may you give the Holy Spirit so that the Syrian people can share our Lord Jesus Christ and become a nation that rises up with the power of the gospel. Thus, by the power of God, may the Syrian people be transformed and rise up as a church that spreads the gospel while waiting for the Lord to return.