1. Introduction
After the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) documented several extrajudicial killings of civilians, including two children and a woman. These incidents took place in the Aleppo countryside, the Baniyas countryside in Tartous Governorate, and three distinct areas in Latakia Governorate, between December 2024 and February 2025.
Most victims were Alawite, suggesting the killings may have been sectarian in nature. This followed other disturbing instances where entire families—including women, children, and individuals hors de combat—were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular between 6 and 10 March 2025, as reported by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
For its part, Amnesty International investigated 32 killings in the city of Baniyas that occurred between 8 and 9 March. It concluded that these killings were deliberate, targeted at the Alawite minority sect, and unlawful, attributing responsibility to militias linked to the transitional government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) reported that violence along the coast resulted in the deaths of 1,169 civilians, including 732 in Latakia, 276 in Tartus, and 161 in Hama. Additionally, the independent Civil Peace Group – Seen documented a total of 1,743 civilian deaths on the Syrian coast between 6 and 10 March 2025, as stated in its latest statistics published on 29 March 2025.
The Syrian caretaker government, now known as the transitional government, took power following the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime on 8 December 2024. This change resulted from Operation Deterrence of Aggression, which was launched by the now-dissolved Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other opposition factions. Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of HTS, was appointed president on 29 January 2025.
In four cases documented in this report, killings were carried out by members of the transitional government’s General Security Service during raids targeting suspects or during extensive security campaigns; the other four cases involved unconfirmed armed individuals. In three of these cases, the perpetrators were foreign fighters, while in the fourth case, the militants identified themselves as members of HTS. These findings are based on five detailed testimonies collected by STJ from relatives of the victims and witnesses to the incidents. All individuals requested that their identities and identifying details be kept confidential for fear of reprisals. Therefore, pseudonyms have been used to refer to them when quoting their testimonies.
The authorities’ responses to the killings varied depending on the circumstances, but were notably similar in nature. Despite their different approaches to these incidents, they failed to disclose the outcomes of the investigations they initiated, the identities of the perpetrators, or the processes involved in holding them accountable. In three of the cases, no public investigations were initiated at all. Monitoring and verification conducted by the STJ team—which involved tracking reports of killings by militants and armed groups on social media platforms and news websites—indicate that the cases documented in this report are part of a broader pattern of violations observed in various regions of Syria during the first three months of the transitional government’s rule, leading up to the events of 6 March 2025. These violations were often justified as “individual mistakes.”
Among the documented cases, the STJ reported an incident involving the killing of three judges by unidentified gunmen at the Rabia Masyaf junction in the northwestern Hama countryside on 24 December 2024. The victims; Youssef Ghanoum, Muhammad Hammoud, and Munther Hussein, were civilian real estate judges serving at the Hama City Court, not military judges. All three were Alawite and originally hailed from the cities of Masyaf and al-Qadmus in Hama. As with other cases documented in this report, authorities opened an investigation into the incident; however, the findings have not been made public.
STJ team also documented the field executions of ten individuals in the Alawite village of Arza, located in the Hama countryside, by unknown gunmen on 31 January 2025. Additionally, STJ verified the execution of sixteen people in a single day in the Alawite village of Fahel, in the Homs countryside, on 23 January 2025. This incident occurred during a General Security campaign aimed at targeting Fahel and other areas in the western Homs countryside. STJ plans to provide a detailed report on this matter separately. Furthermore, in Homs, human rights organizations documented the torture-related killing of Louay Talal Tayara, a young man, just 24 hours after his arrest by General Security.
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