In the village of al-Sanobar, in the countryside of Jableh, on 7 March 2025, Umm Ammar’s world shattered when she lost six of her sons in an instant. She, her husband, and her daughters were all there, witnessing the heartbreaking event.
The attackers planned to execute the father as well, but one of them told him to leave: ‘Go… and do not look back.’ He escaped, leaving Umm Ammar to bear the heavy burden of saying a final goodbye to her six sons alone.
“I am a grieving mother. I have lost six young men right before my eyes,” Umm Ammar sobbed.
Majd, her youngest and dearest, was only twenty-six. He was the soul of the family, valued for his grace, his laughter, and his gentle devotion to his sisters. He had dreamed of traveling to Dubai to support his family through their difficulties; having excelled in his electronic studies, he was waiting for an opportunity to build a future. But his dream was shattered; he was snatched away in the prime of his youth. When they shot him with the rifle, his head was blown apart.
His mother said, “I gathered the pieces of his head with my own hands and placed them back. He was my son, my friend, my brother, and my companion in life. After he was gone the light of my eyes was extinguished.”
Amer was her soulmate, a son who could read her heart with a single glance. He worked tirelessly day and night to support her and his sisters. When she once urged him to marry, he replied, “Mother, my car is my only bride. Everything I do is to support you. If I were to marry, I could no longer support you, and I will never abandon you.”
A day before the massacre, he went to a friend to get a sack of flour, as if his heart had sensed the approaching end. He died as he lived: trying to protect his family from the cruelty of hunger.
Haider dreamed of owning a carpentry shop. After endless days of toil and sleepless nights, his dream finally came true, but his time in that shop was cut short after only two months. On the day of the massacre, he watched his shop burn before his eyes. He did not mourn his material loss; instead, he turned to his mother and said, ‘The only thing that matters, Mother, is that you are safe.’ But he, too, was taken, murdered alongside his brothers.
Iyad, despite having modest means, was preparing for his engagement and had already bought the gold for his fiancée. Years earlier, he had survived a terrifying fall from the fifth floor; doctors had feared he would be permanently paralyzed, but he defied the odds and walked again after seeking the blessings of Sheikh Ali al-Jabbar. Tragically, when they seized him, they brutally beat him on his back, the very same back held together by surgical steel. As he was dragged away, his mother whispered, “May God be with you, my son.” But they showed him no mercy; they killed him, too.
Ammar, the eldest, was a devoted father of three. Every morning, he would visit his mother to share a quiet moment, pleading, “Mother, please, spare me a sip of your coffee.” In the afternoons, he would ask what she had cooked, cherishing both her kitchen and her presence. He was taken from this world, leaving behind young children who will now grow up without their father to guide them.
Mohammad was a man of a pure heart and noble spirit, the kind of person who never turned anyone away or let a soul in need go without help. His dream was simple; he asked for very little from life. He only wanted to hold his own child in his arms, to name him, and to call him his own. But fate was not as kind as he was. He was taken from this world before his dream could ever come true.
For three agonizing days, Umm Ammar and her husband slept beneath a tree, unable to reach their sons to bury them. When they finally did, she carried them in her own arms, she could not bear to leave them on the road. Bringing them to the threshold of their home, she tenderly wiped their faces with her tears, whispering, “Wake up now, my sons.” But they did not rise.
They were gone, forever silenced, joining hundreds of innocent souls lost along the Syrian coast during the mass killings of March 2025.
[This account is based exclusively on the testimony of Umm Ammar, the mother of the six victims.]