As of 8 March, 2025, at least 64 kidnappings and executions have been reported in Homs, mostly involving Alawites, the religious minority linked to the Assad family [Hanna Davis]
On a cold February night, a group of friends in the Syrian city of Homs gathered beside the heat of a steel furnace, sipping Yerba mate, a popular drink of South American origins. They were meeting at Harmony, a grassroots peacebuilding initiative, a space in which they say they felt more protected than in their neighbourhoods.
The mood was somber. Hours earlier, a young woman was walking alone in her neighbourhood, Wadi al-Dhahab, when an armed man on a motorcycle attempted to grab her. The incident happened just beside 25-year-old Lynn Kalthoum’s home, shocking her and exacerbating her already-crushing sense of insecurity.
“People didn’t interfere, no one helped her,” Kalthoum told The New Arab. “The people had guns, we don’t know if they’re [security] officials or not.”
Since the fall of the Assad regime in December, kidnappings and killings — many directed against Syria’s minority Alawite sect, to which the ousted Assad family belong — have been ongoing in Homs, with cases spiking in February and March. As a result, fear and even paranoia have spread throughout Homs and forced many people to flee the city and even the country.
“I feel shaky because I don’t know what’s happening around me,” 26-year-old Catherine, who was sitting next to Kalthoum, told The New Arab. She requested to go by a pseudonym, wary of repercussions if her identity was revealed.
Catherine felt her neighbourhood in Homs, Hamidiyeh, had become notably more dangerous after the fall of the regime.
“I feel scared, I feel like the space is tightening around me, like I’m suffocating but I don’t know from what, exactly,” she said, as she raised her hands in front of her and brought them closer together as if she was squeezing an invisible object.
By late March, the danger was weighing on the two young women. Both were hoping to leave Syria. “I sincerely can’t take it anymore,” said Catherine in a follow-up exchange on March 24. “I get severe panic attacks because I’m afraid something would happen in the night or my family would be killed.”
Catherine’s phone rang, and she abruptly stopped talking to answer the call from her mother. “I just needed to know if my mom was okay,” she said after she got off the line, apologising for the interruption.
Catherine said her mom was followed a few days ago by a man who tried to rob her. She was able to run away, hiding in a nearby shop.
“It’s so random, and it’s really scary,” Catherine said. The lack of reliable news on the attacks was exacerbating Catherine’s anxiety. “You feel more lost trying to search for what’s happening because no one official is speaking,” she said.
Kidnappings ‘linked’ to regime
Dommar al-Soleman, a Paris-based researcher working with the Civil Peace Group, a Syrian civil society organisation, has documented 86 cases of kidnappings and disappearances in Homs since December 9, 2024, the day after Assad fell.
He told The New Arab that 23 of those kidnapped were executed, and the other 63 victims’ fates were still unknown. (Those who were kidnapped and later released were excluded from the count, he noted).
In March alone, al-Soleman documented 16 kidnapping cases, where seven of the victims were found dead. In one case, on March 19, armed men shot three men in their home in Homs’ Masakin al-Iddikhar neighbourhood.
“Someone knocked at the door, came and shot them, and they closed the door and left,” al-Soleman said.
Bodies of those kidnapped are regularly turning up at hospitals around the city. On Wednesday, the body of a man from the Karm Shamsham neighbourhood was delivered to the Waar hospital in the city. He was kidnapped last week, al-Soleman said.
The New Arab could not independently verify each individual case, but Syrian rights groups have documented several dozen cases of kidnappings and killings allegedly on sectarian basis across Syria, including Homs.
Homs’ new police chief, Alaa Omran, claimed several of the reported kidnappings and murders in the city were linked to the former Syrian regime. Omran was among the government officials Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham appointed after they overthrew Assad.
He said the kidnappings had “significantly decreased” since the regime fell and the dissolution of its affiliated militias and groups, referencing the regime-affiliated shabiha, who often carried out the heavy lifting of Assad’s brutality.
In Homs, the shabiha were accused of committing a massacre of some 200 Sunni civilians in 2018, as well as of kidnappings, killings, and property theft under the regime. The gang-like militias came mostly from the Homs’ Alawite neighbourhoods, where Assad had crafted his support base.
Al-Soleman claimed that many of the kidnappings and killings today were likely individual “revenge” acts against the crimes of the shabiha. He also noted that the vast majority of kidnapping victims were Alawites and blamed sectarianism for the crimes, explaining how the 2011 Syrian uprising, the ensuing years of conflict, and the Assad regime’s propaganda and policies had stoked the city’s sectarian divisions.
A February report from the Civil Peace Group said that “ransom-related kidnappings were minimal, suggesting motives beyond financial gain, potentially involving retaliation against communities previously perceived as supporters of the former regime.”
Bassem al-Ahmad, a researcher with the rights group Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ), also commented on the high rate of kidnappings in the city and said they were happening on a “sectarian basis”. He said it was important to address the crimes’ sectarian nature: “There are sectarian issues in Syria, which should be solved through dialogue and addressed by the government, and not ignored.”
He called for the new authorities to take more forceful action to address the crimes. “If there is no justice, if there is no truth, then the cycle of violence will be repeated,” he stated.
It is worth noting that kidnappings and attacks have also targeted individuals linked to the new authorities, likely committed by criminal elements or others with ties to the deposed regime, known in Syria as ‘fulool‘ or remnants. On Monday, at least 11 were killed in the Tartus coastal countryside, including a local mayor.
Security vacuum?
Omran, the Homs’ police chief, denied there was any type of security vacuum in the city, but said in Homs countryside they were facing challenges related to the “lack of human resources”, as well as instability due to the “remnants of the regime” and other “undisciplined elements.”
The new Syrian authorities dismissed thousands of police officers, security personnel, and soldiers who were working under the Assad regime. So far, most have not been allowed to resume their positions.
Omran said that they were training new police recruits, graduating classes of around 1,000 every few weeks.
“The security situation in Homs city and its countryside is very good and is steadily improving, with the revitalisation of police operations and departments, and residents’ cooperation and interaction with the police,” the police chief stated.
Neighbourhoods shut down
Despite the reassurances by the police chief, the prevalence of kidnappings and killings in Homs has prompted self-imposed curfews in some neighbourhoods. A resident of Homs’ Alawite-majority neighbourhood, al-Zahra, told The New Arab that shops close at 5 pm, with residents fearful of venturing into the dark streets. He requested to remain anonymous.
The sectarian violence that erupted on Syria’s coast early this month, and spread throughout the Homs and Hama governorates only exacerbated residents’ fears. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), an independent human rights monitor, documented the extrajudicial killing of at least 1,034 individuals between March 6 and March 15.
The al-Zahra resident said that on March 6, the same evening violence erupted on the coast, around 50 to 60 motorbikes and cars rampaged around the streets, their drivers shouting “Allahu Akhbar.”
“It was scary,” the young man said. “They were civilians, entering [the neighbourhood] and roaming around. Security wasn’t escorting them, nor did it stop them. They could have done whatever they wanted,” he added.
He covered his window with a blanket, to appear as if no one was home, and stayed quiet. “You never know what they have in mind, they might shoot at houses. My family was terrified of that,” he said.
On March 7, masked gunmen entered the nearby majority-Alawite neighbourhood of Hadara and shot at a building, causing a room to erupt in flames, according to a video circulated on social media by the Syrian Justice Archive. Al-Soleman, the researcher, verified the incident, although he noted that the targeted house was empty and no one was injured or killed inside.
“People feel that the new state is trying to displace them in one way, or another,” the al-Zahra resident said. “This is how I feel too, honestly, like the new state doesn’t want us.”
Homs’ residents are among the thousands of people who have fled Syria this month. UNHCR announced on March 26 that nearly 22,000 people had arrived in neighbouring Lebanon, fleeing bloodshed across the border.
“The Alawites [in Homs] don’t dare to walk in their streets. Therre are shootings, beatings, kidnappings, so no one dares to leave their houses,” said Baeeda, 42, who fled Homs’ al-Zahra neighbourhood on March 8.
“We were stuck in our homes and we felt trapped,” she told The New Arab.
For over two weeks, she had been sleeping with her children on the floor of a mosque in the Lebanese village of al-Massaoudiye, near the Syrian border, beside hundreds of others.
‘Intoxicated on victory’
Not far from the mosque, Mohammad Ibrahim, 38, was waiting outside al-Massaoudiye’s municipality office. On March 7 — the day violence exploded on the coast — Ibrahim was kidnapped from his home in the al-Zahra neighbourhood.
He said a group of armed men arrived at his door, questioned him, and then handcuffed him and demanded he get into their car.
Ibrahim’s neighbour watched from his roof as the men led Ibrahim out of his house. He was able to quickly place a call to the new Syrian authorities, explaining what had happened and providing the vehicle’s license plate number, before he was spotted by the armed men and forced to climb into the car with Ibrahim.
They sped away, with Ibrahim and his neighbour in the back seat. Ibrahim said they were stopped at a checkpoint patrolled by the new authorities, who asked who the armed men were. They said they were with a group called “Dimishkil,” Ibrahim remembered, and then they were allowed to continue.
“I was terrified, I kept saying that I’m a civilian and that I don’t have relations with anyone,” Ibrahim recounted. Ibrahim is an electrical engineer, and said he has “never held a gun in his life”.
They then arrived at an unknown location, were brought inside a room, and questioned about their relation to the Assad regime. After about three hours and a bribe, Ibrahim and his neighbour were released.
“They found out we were just civilians and had no relation [to Assad] whatsoever,” he said. However, Ibrahim believes the real reason for their release was the phone call his neighbour made to the authorities, as he knows others in Homs who had been kidnapped, and then later killed, for no apparent reason.
After the kidnapping, Ibrahim decided it was no longer safe for him and his family to stay in Homs, so they hastily packed their bags and began their journey to Lebanon.
Back in Homs city, the director of Harmony, Kamal Awad, 31, was working late in his office. “The fearful person often cannot think about what to do and the one who is intoxicated with victory doesn’t see the mistakes that are happening,” Awad told The New Arab.
“Each time the gap becomes larger between the two — the one drunk on victory and the one who is too afraid — the harder it is for them to come together,” he warned.
One of Awad’s main goals at Harmony was to “bring the world together”, he said. Awad’s office was full of sculptures and paintings — artwork central to Harmony’s peacebuilding mission.
“Before the fall of Assad and after, we have been working on building peace and safe spaces,” he said, “We can tell the stories of the world and raise societal issues by enhancing the [awareness] through the tools of art… Let them discover the other.”
In addition to holding regular art exhibitions, Awad said they also recently held workshops on conflict resolution and transitional justice, which attracted a “diverse” crowd of youth from the community, of all sects.
Catherine said that at Harmony, she was able to “sit with this person [different from you] and go beyond the [stereotypes], go deeper with the person, deeper than their shell outside.”
“You cannot expose yourself in such a way if you don’t feel safe,” she added.
