Four people died and several others were injured in a shooting near a mosque in Omancapital, Peddlerin a rare outbreak of violence in the Middle Eastern Sultanate.
The shooting took place near a mosque in the al-Wadi al-Kabir neighborhood in the east of the city, the Royal Oman Police said in a statement. publish on X in the early hours of Tuesday, local time.
Video shared on social media and geotagged by NBC News appeared to show a crowd of people running as gunshots rang out near the Imam Ali Mosque. Someone could be heard shouting “Oh Hussein.”
The force said at least four people were killed and “several others” were injured, citing preliminary information from an investigation into the incident.
Investigators provided limited details about the incident and did not share any information about possible suspects or a possible motive. The force did not say whether anyone was arrested.
They said that “all security measures” were taken to respond to the situation and that an investigation was still ongoing.
Shortly after the attack, Oman’s Department of Blood Banking Services wrote in X that “large quantities of blood reserves will be needed to heal the injured.”
The U.S. Embassy in Oman also issued a warning for Americans to “stay away from the area.”
He said U.S. citizens in the area should be aware of their surroundings, lock their doors, monitor local news and report any suspicious activity to local police.
All visa appointments would be canceled that day, he said, citing security precautions following the shooting. However, he added that they will likely resume on Wednesday.
The State Department has level 2 travel advice in place to exercise greater caution when traveling in Oman “due to terrorism and armed conflict,” specifically warning U.S. citizens not to travel to the area near the border with Yemen, the poorest country in the region that has been ravaged by civil war since August 2014.
Such violence is rare in Oman, which is situated on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.
Oman is a predominantly Muslim country, although most practitioners are neither Sunni nor Shia. Instead, many in the country practice Ibadi Islam, a more moderate form of religion.
O homicide rate in the country was consistently 0.7 per 100,000 people in 2010, 2015 and 2019, compared to 5.8 per 100,000 in 2019 in the U.Srising from 5.7 in 2016 and 5.5 in 2010, according to data published by the World Health Organization.
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
