According to local activists, a group of armed masked extremists stormed the village of Tal Dahab, inhabited by the Alawite Muslim minority in the eastern countryside of Hama province, and shot dead four people.

Sources said that the victims included Jawad Ahmad Jawad, the village’s mayor, and that the gunmen were able to escape after carrying out their crime.

A group called “Ansar al-Sunna Brigades” claimed responsibility for the attack and said it would continue its actions of “slitting the throats” of members of religious minorities, particularly Alawites and Shiites.

In the town of Maraba, some five kilometres north of the capital, the body of scientist Hassan Ibrahim was found on Sunday, five days after he was kidnapped.

The victim, a native of the province of Tartous, had been invited by the new authorities to continue his work at the Barzeh Scientific Research Centre and was abducted by armed hooded men after leaving the facility.

Last Thursday, at least 10 people from the Alawite minority were killed by an Islamist gang in the town of Arzeh, in the north of the same Hama governorate, some 250 kilometres north of the capital.

Local activists quoted by the Syrian Network for Human Rights condemned the massacre, saying the victims were executed in cold blood by extremists who stormed the village at night, forcing civilians out of their homes and then killing them with individual silenced weapons before fleeing to an unknown destination.

According to human rights groups, the number of sectarian reprisals and killings since the beginning of 2025 has reached 105 in several Syrian governorates, leaving a death toll of 228 people, including five women and one child.

Most of these violations took place in the provinces of Homs and Hama, with 97 and 63 deaths respectively, while 25 deaths were confirmed in the coastal governorates of Tartus and Latakia.

mh/oda/fm