AL-QAIDA’S latest incarnation in Syria claimed responsibility yesterday for Saturday’s sectarian terrorist massacre of pilgrims in Damascus.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said all 40 dead and 120 injured were pilgrims from Iraq.

Hayat Tahrir as-Sham (the Levant Liberation Organisation) said two of its suicide bombers carried out the attack as a message to Syria’s ally Iran.

But on the same day troops took parts of the capital’s Qaboun suburb from the new group dubbed “Hetesh.”

The latest terrorist atrocity targeted Shi’ite Muslim holy sites in the capital.

Iraq said the bombers attacked tourist buses — contradicting the terrorists’ claim they targeted Syrian troops and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies.

Syrian Prime Minister Emad Khamis and Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar visited the victims in hospital on Saturday.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi also condemned the indiscriminate bloodshed.

Yesterday a Hetesh suicide car bomber attacked an army checkpoint in a residential area of the southern city of Daraa, killing an unspecified number of troops and Hezbollah volunteers.

Formed in January, Hetesh replaced the earlier Army of Conquest, an alliance between Western-backed groups and the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front which rebranded itself the Levant Conquest Front last year.

Nusra, along with Isis, is designated by the UN as a terrorist group and excluded from the the Geneva peace talks and ceasefires.