Extrajudicial killings of Alawites plague Homs city

HOMS — Around 1:30 AM on April 25, Muhammad al-Waeri and his family were fast asleep at their home in Homs city’s Alawite-majority Karm al-Loz neighborhood when a loud pounding on the door startled them awake. 

Al-Waeri, 24, went to open the door and found himself facing a group of masked men dressed in black. They asked for him by name, then took him away at gunpoint. 

“They said they were general security,” forces under the new Syrian government’s Ministry of Interior, a family member said, requesting anonymity for safety reasons. “I think they would have killed me in the apartment if I resisted.”

Before coming to the family’s door, the same men searched the apartment downstairs where his uncle lives. “They asked them if they were Alawites,” and asked for al-Waeri by name before coming upstairs, the source told Syria Direct the following day.

Al-Waeri’s mother went looking for her son at the local police department and general security, but received no answers, the source added. The family later learned the masked men “killed him–shot him—the moment they took him.” Al-Waeri’s body was found at the nearby Adawiya Mosque “minutes later,” the relative said in a voice hoarse with grief. 

It appears that al-Waeri was individually targeted, but it is not clear why. His relative believes he was killed solely for being an Alawite, as “he didn’t serve in the army” and was a fourth-year engineering student at Homs University at the time of his death. He was “polite, educated, well-mannered—all the good qualities, everyone attests to that,” the family member said.

Al-Waeri was one of at least 20 civilians killed in Syria’s central Homs city over the span of six days in late April. Most were Alawites, members of the minority Shiite Muslim sect to which the ousted president Bashar al-Assad belongs. 

The killings included both “targeted assassinations of individuals previously affiliated with the Assad regime” and “random killings suspected to be driven by sectarian and retaliatory motives,” the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), an independent monitor, reported on April 30. 

A member of Muhammad al-Waeri’s family receives condolences from friends and family members in Homs city, 4/26/2025 (Natacha Danon/Syria Direct)

Between January and the end of April, extrajudicial killings of at least 361 civilians took place in Homs and Hama provinces, SNHR told Syria Direct. Most took place in areas inhabited by Alawites, the organization said. 

This period overlaps with an explosion of violence there and across Syria’s coastal provinces in March, when more than 800 people were killed after clashes between former regime loyalists and government forces sparked a wave of sectarian killings targeting Alawites. 

In April, killings in Homs and Hama outnumbered those in Tartous and Latakia, according to SNHR. Most recently, a mother and daughter were killed by unidentified gunmen in Homs city’s Wadi al-Dhahab neighborhood on May 4. 

The circumstances surrounding some of the killings are unclear, while others were clearly targeted. Two sources Syria Direct spoke to said their relatives’ killers identified themselves as members of Damascus’s security forces, while others were left with only questions.

Syria Direct reached out to the Syrian Ministry of Interior to ask about accusations against its security forces and inquire whether any arrests have been made in relation to the latest killings in Homs. A spokesperson said the ministry was not yet in a position to make statements to the press. 

Revenge killings?

The same week in late April that al-Waeri was killed, Hussein al-Nasir, 41, was taken under similar circumstances after an armed group of black-clad men knocked on his door in the Karm al-Zaitoun neighborhood. When he opened, they entered, said they were with general security and took him, a family member told Syria Direct. 

Al-Nasir had a military background, having served for “a year or two” in the 4th Division, a notorious branch of the army led by Maher al-Assad. He joined the army for economic reasons, and manned checkpoints near Manbij, in the Aleppo countryside, the relative said. 

Al-Nasir’s brother, Alaa—a civilian with no military background—attempted to intervene in the arrest and was taken too. Both were shot in the street minutes later.

“We were optimistic about an amnesty, equal justice, and supposed democracy. All this talk isn’t true,” the relative said. “As Alawites, we suffered in the time of Bashar al-Assad, and we’ve suffered with the current regime.”

Al-Nasir’s relative now fears for his own safety when he leaves home to go to work, but his financial situation does not allow him to stay home, he said, pointing to his broken phone and modest apartment. “We suffer every day from everything,” he said. “I’m in a dark tunnel. I don’t know where to go.”

‘No reason to target him’

While some, like Hussein al-Nasir and Muhammad al-Waeri, were clearly targeted, other killings in late April appear indiscriminate, though still centered in Alawite-majority neighborhoods. 

The same week al-Waeri was killed, a mother, Manal Hassan, and her twin 18-year-old daughters, Luna and Leen Muhammad, were killed in a drive-by shooting, also in the Karm al-Loz neighborhood. 

“I don’t know if they were targeted because of their sect,” a source close to the family told Syria Direct. “It could have been some reckless, spiteful person, someone who was drunk, or it could be sectarian. I don’t know.”

A second source close to the family described the killing as a “coincidence.” She believes the mother and daughters, who were Murshidis, could have been mistaken for Alawites and targeted. 

Neighbors who witnessed the incident told her the assailants used a kalashnikov, and that one wore black and the other military fatigues. She believes they were likely acting alone, rather than on behalf of the security forces. 

“We’re living in the chaos of weapons. Where is the government if it’s unable to control weapons?” the source said, with deep frustration. “What matters to us is that the killing stops.” 

While the new government has called on all parties to surrender their weapons and carried out collection campaigns, they have been accused of being “selective” and disproportionately disarming communities viewed as loyal to the former regime. Weapon collections have also taken place in historically opposition areas such as Daraa. 

Salama’s family reported the killings to the police, who “tried to help,” the source said. A representative of the provincial council also visited the family. However, “until now, there is no belief [in justice].” 

Another civilian, Mahmoud Hamed al-Dib, a 69-year-old water engineer from Homs’ Wadi al-Dhahab neighborhood, went to work one day in late April never to return. “All night, I kept telling myself now he’ll come, but I lost all hope the next day,” a family member told Syria Direct. 

“There was no reason to target him,” al-Dib’s relative said. “We want to know who the killer is, who is causing these problems. Even the civil defense who brought the body did not say where they brought it from. What is the reason for the secrecy?”

Al-Dib taught at Homs University in addition to working as a water inspector. His son, a former regime army officer, has been detained without charge since January after he was detained during an arrest campaign. 

“I don’t know if the basis for what happened to [al-Dib] was sectarian,” the source said. “He was never sectarian in his life.”

“The country will be ruined by ‘isolated incidents,’” another relative interjected.

‘Delay in transitional justice’

“The spread of killings in Syria is the result of a delay in transitional justice,” said Feras al-Said, a former researcher SNHR from rural Homs who now lives in France. Central Syria has become a hotspot for violence due to its demographic makeup and historical grievances, he explained.

“Homs is the most complex because of the demographic overlap, at a sectarian level or due to the affiliation of these individuals to military entities during the revolution,” al-Said said. 

Homs city is predominantly Sunni but has a significant Alawite population, as well as a small community of Christians. Rural Homs also hosts significant Alawite and Shiite populations.

“Areas of Homs came out against the regime from the start, and from the start there was a war between areas, between neighborhoods,” al-Said said. The families of “people who were killed know who killed them.” 

During the war, Homs was a “strategic area,” a focus of the military efforts of the regime and allied militias, he explained. “Homs was really the starting point and staging point for Hezbollah forces, and a transit corridor for Shiite militias coming from Iraq.”

Those who participated in these forces were “sons of the area, who killed their neighbors,” al-Said said. “The number of shabiha and forces that fought with the regime is significant. That led to people taking revenge into their own hands, rather than waiting for the government.”

However, not all those who are being killed “committed violations,” he added. “Some cases are random, without known reasons. Some are meaningless revenge killings. Others are personal disputes, others by mistake.” 

Community activist Mohammed Saleh sits in his home in Homs city, 4/27/2025 (Natacha Danon/Syria Direct)

Mohammed Saleh, a community activist who works for the Homs-based Civil Peace Group organization, also sees transitional justice and accountability as the only way to stop the cycle of violence. Saleh, who is Alawite, spent 12 years in Saydanya prison for belonging to the Communist Labor Party, and was arrested multiple times during the Syrian revolution for opposing the Assad regime.

“The government wants to neglect transitional justice but without it there will be more bloodshed—revenge will not end. Without justice, societal peace cannot be reached,” he said.

“Syrians are paying the price for the previous regime. It’s not the [Alawite] sect that should carry the burden,” Saleh added. The Assad regime long portrayed itself as a protector of minorities, and during the revolution and war stoked sectarian tensions by targeting Sunni-majority areas and largely sparing those belonging to religious and ethnic minorities. 

Leveraging his revolutionary credentials, Saleh now works as a mediator between his community and Syria’s new authorities. Through his efforts, he has been able to secure the return of some Alawite homes seized by armed actors and call for an end to extrajudicial killings.

But for Saleh, the state bears ultimately responsibility for the violations. “The state, the [ruling] authority, carries responsibility for the protection of all. When it neglects protection, we accuse it of abetting…It is responsible as long as it is in control,” he said.

“We’re trying, as much as possible, to tell the authorities that killing is forbidden. There should be courts, justice must be taken through the law,” he added.

In its report on the late April killings in Homs, SNHR also stressed the government’s “heightened responsibility” to uphold the rule of law in the post-conflict period. “Failure to respond effectively or delays in investigating and prosecuting these crimes represent a breach of the state’s obligations and entrench a culture of impunity,” it said.

In January, President Ahmad al-Sharaa said civil peace should be upheld by “seeking transitional justice and preventing revenge attacks.” In February, he pledged to establish a transitional justice body, which has yet to be announced. Damascus established an independent commission to investigate the killings on the coast in March, though its initial 30-day deadline was later extended to early July. 

“They were supposedly about forgiveness and transitional justice, but they took revenge,” said the relative of al-Nasir, the former 4th Division member who was killed with his brother in late April. “We had high hopes for this man [al-Sharaa], and to be honest there are good people in the security forces, but the factions have ruined us.” 

A New York Times investigation last month found some members of former rebel factions and government forces participated in massacres on the coast, citing civilian and Syrian government sources.

“We don’t want what happened to [Salama] and her daughters to happen again,” the source close to the mother and daughters killed in a drive-by shooting said. “Let their souls rest in peace, and be a spark for a new Syria.” 

*Correction 5/12/2025: The initial version of this report incorrectly identified Manal Hassan as Manal Salama. Syria Direct regrets the error.