Alawites, Druze, Shiites, and Christians in Syria are at heightened risk of being abducted or killed extrajudicially. Women and girls from the minority Alawite sect are especially vulnerable to sexual violence and forced marriage. This quarterly update covering July, August, and September 2026 highlights known or suspected attacks against religious minorities in Syria, as an indicator of the ongoing threats to religious minorities in the country.
A sequence of portraits showing victims of religious persecution during the months of July-September in Syria.
On December 8, 2024, the 54-year-old Assad dictatorship collapsed, bringing an end to an era of widespread state terror and mass violence.
In its place, a government has taken power led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former member of al-Qaeda whose forces committed numerous atrocities against religious minorities in Syria during the uprising against the Assad regime.
The Syrian Transitional Government has publicly committed to protecting the rights of all Syrians, regardless of ethnic or religious background. But Syria’s new security forces are largely composed of former Islamist fighters drawn from Syria’s Sunni majority.
Government and government-aligned forces carried out large-scale massacres of Alawite Muslim civilians in March 2025, and Druze civilians in July 2025.
After the March 2025 massacres, Christian Solidarity International issued a Genocide Warning for Syria.
Archbishop Jacques Mourad, the Catholic Metropolitan of Homs and a committed peace activist, warned during a July visit to Austria that Syria was unsafe for refugees to return home to.
He emphasized that Christians, and especially Alawites and Druze, are a target for extremist militias, and that the new parliament is primarily composed of hardline Islamists.
July 12 marked the first convocation of Syria’s new People’s Assembly since the power change. President Al-Sharaa personally selected one-third of the members, and the remaining two-thirds were chosen by hand-picked electoral committees.
Minorities were allotted miniscule symbolic representation, not proportional to demography.
The handful appointed are known for pro-government stances – some at the expense of their own community.
The sole Druze seat, for example, was allotted to Laith al-Balous, who sided with the government as his fellow Druze were facing massacre at the hands of the security forces.
The appointments of outliers like influencer and actress Rozina al-Ladkani appear designed to detract attention from the overwhelming presence of Islamists.
Below are a compilation of reported extrajudicial killings, abductions, arbitrary detentions, and other notable incidents spanning July through September 2026 in which religious minorities were targeted.
On July 3, five young Alawite day laborers – Hasan al-Rashid, Faris al-Rashid, Mohammed Salim, Ghadir Salama, and Jaafar al-Riyani – were found dead near Palmyra in central Syria. The men were allegedly lured by the prospect of mine clearing work by a General Security commander, according to a tip from inside General Security reported by the Syrian Justice Archive.
The body of Rani Halawa, a Christian and the brother of Father Rafi Halawa, was found on July 3 several hours after he went missing near Jaramana, a Druze majority town with a large Christian population surrounded by Sunni towns on the outskirts of Damascus.
On July 4, an Alawite man Ayham Rajha was found dead near Damascus two days after he had gone missing.
Fadi al-Shaer, a Christian man from the town of Kafr Buhum, was killed after being abducted at gunpoint with his daughter on July 8. His body was found with gunshot wounds while his daughter was released.
A 63-year-old Alawite man Mustafa Akhras was shot dead outside his shop near a General Security checkpoint on July 17 in the village of al-Kharsan in Hama governorate.
The body of an Alawite taxi driver was found with signs of torture on July 17, four days after he had been kidnapped and his vehicle stolen after dropping off a relative at Damascus airport.
An Alawite man, Mustafa Habib Akhras, 63, was killed on July 17 when gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on him in front of his shop near a General Security checkpoint in the village of Al-Kharsan, in the eastern countryside of Hama governorate.
An Alawite mother Amina and her son Issa, 9, and daughter Lujain, 14, from the Khansa family were shot dead by gunmen on a motorcycle in Homs city on July 18.
The body of an Alawite man, Sami Khalouf, was found outside his village of Shaniyah in Homs governorate on July 19, one day after he was arrested by General Security forces at his poultry farm.
The body of another Alawite man, Hussein al-Saleh, detained several months earlier by General Security in Hama governorate, was delivered to his family on July 19. The cause of death was reportedly torture and ill treatment in detention.
On July 27 in Homs city, gunmen riding a motorcycle opened fire on an Alawite family in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood, reportedly with silenced pistols, killing 41-year-old mother, Yumna al-Halaq, and critically wounding her 13-year-old son Zein.
Also on July 27 in Hama governorate, an Alawite man, Emad Asad, was killed by gunmen while herding sheep near his village of Hawrat Amourin.
The body of Ibrahim Mayya, a 19-year-old Alawite university student, was found with bullet wounds on August 4, left in an orchard on the outskirts of Homs city, a day after he was kidnapped from his neighborhood.
A Shiite man, Mohiyeddine Samrou, from the village of Al-Ghor in Homs governorate was found shot dead on August 9 at the Houla dam, where he had been fishing.
Nader Tannous, a Christian man who had recently returned from life as a refugee in Sweden, was shot dead by gunmen on August 15 in Homs, while returning home from work at the hair salon he had opened in the city. He was originally from Wadi al-Nasara (Valley of the Christians) in the countryside of Homs.
Aziz Salloum, a 52-year-old man from the Murshidi sect, an offshoot of the Alawite minority, was killed on August 15 when gunmen who invaded his village in rural Hama province lobbed an explosive device. His sister and three-year-old niece were also reportedly wounded.
Two days later, on August 17, another attack occurred in the same region of Hama, in the Ghab Plain. Gunmen entered the village of Aziziya and threw an explosive device into a home, killing an elderly Alawite man, Mohammed Safi al-Ali.
On August 20, also in Hama province, gunmen killed an Alawite man, Issa Nayef Mihoub, in front of his home with automatic weapons.
Samer Osman, an Alawite man, was killed by gunmen on August 19 while selling coffee under the Hamah Bridge in Damascus. Two days later, on August 21, gunmen killed another Alawite man, Ahmad Ali Hassan, while he was working at his shop in Damascus.
On August 28, the body of a young Alawite man, Faisal Ghaleb Zurayfa, who was working as a security guard in the industrial area of Adra, was found in Damascus two days after his kidnapping outside his workplace.
On September 5, the body of a 24-year-old Alawite man, Suleiman Salem, was found with gunfire wounds after his kidnapping in Homs governorate, where he was working at a poultry farm near his village.
The body of Ghiath Suleiman, an Alawite man in his 50s, was found at his chicken farm near the village of Kafr Kamra on September 7.
Armed men on motorcycles stormed an Alawite majority village in the Maysaf region of Hama governorate and opened fire on residents, killing one man, Ahmed Omran, and wounding another on September 7.
That same day, also in Maysaf region, gunmen on motorcycles entered a second village and shot at two Alawite brothers who were working on their farmland.
In the same region on September 19, gunmen on a motorcycle shot and wounded two Alawite laborers, Ali al-Darwish and Rabee Abbas, as they were returning from work.
Brothers Hassan and Mohammad Jaafar were shot dead by an armed group while tending to their farmland on September 14 in the Shiite village of Al-Diyabiya in the Qusayr region of Homs governorate.
Gunmen on motorcycles stormed the Alawite village of Tal Sikkin al-Kaadeh in Hama governorate and opened fire on civilians, killing Yamen Shadoud and Ali Fares inside a shop on September 22.
That same day in Hama, two armed men entered the shop of an Alawite man, Ghassan al-Darwish, and shot him. He was hospitalized and died of his wounds that night.
A reported refugee returnee from Germany shot and seriously wounded a Shiite doctor in Damascus on September 23, with the motive believed to be sectarian. Pro-government social media accounts falsely claimed that the victim was a Shiite from Iraq, to claim he was not Syrian.
The body of a 23-year-old Alawite man, Ghaith Barhoum, was found on September 23, one month after he went missing in the coastal city of Latakia.
Gunmen on a motorcycle killed a young man, Ahmad Alloush, and wounded his cousin Moussa Alloush, both Alawites, during an attack on the mixed Alawite-Christian village of Rableh in the Qusayr region of Homs governorate on September 25.
Seven people were killed and four wounded in a sectarian attack against a van carrying engineers and other employees of the Mateen Company in Hama governorate home to a cluster of Alawite villages on September 30.
A statement released October 3 from “the people of Fahel and Jabal al-Helou” alleged that gunmen “affiliated with the de facto authorities” had stopped the van and checked the passengers IDs to ascertain their sectarian identity before carrying out the massacre.
The body of a Christian man, George Nemeh, was found murdered at his farm in the village of Qaya in Latakia governorate on September 30.
Religious minority women and girls, especially Alawite Muslim women, continue to be regularly abducted, sometimes with the apparent complicity of the authorities.
The most egregious case in this quarterly report was the abduction of an eight-year-old Alawite girl, Natalie Mohammed Dakhil, from her village in the countryside of Latakia governorate on August 3.
Residents protested fiercely for the return of the child, blocking the main road of Jableh city. She was finally returned to her family later that day under massive local pressure.
Batoul Alloush, an Alawite Muslim student who disappeared from her university dorm on April 29 and was later presented in public as having converted to Islam, remains separated from her family. CSI interviewed her father after she made a singular call home from captivity.
On July 16, Yazan Karmo, a young Alawite man, went missing after leaving his home in the coastal city of Latakia. He was released three days later.
On July 18, Ali Ibrahim, an Alawite, went missing while on his way to work at Hama University.
On July 19, a young Alawite woman, Farah Khamis, was returned to her family in critical condition and hospitalized following her abduction in Homs governorate on May 21.
On July 19, a 24-year-old Christian woman, Samia al-Nasser, went missing while traveling from Homs governorate to Damascus to visit family.
On July 25 in Homs city, a 23-year-old Alawite woman, Etedal Dargham, went missing.
On July 27 a Christian man, George Abu Nassar, was kidnapped in Sweida in southern Syria. He was released one month later, bearing scars from torture following intervention by a General Security official, who said he used his contacts to secure the release, reportedly preceded by a ransom demand of at least $20,000.
On July 26, a 19-year-old Alawite man from the Syrian coast was kidnapped in Damascus while returning from work, with abductors demanding a ransom of $25,000 for his release and threatening to kill him if not paid.
On July 31, an Alawite truck driver was reported missing by his family. His last known location was on the highway between Damascus and the central city of Homs.
A Sunni baccalaureate student shed light on the growing phenomenon of abductions of women and girls in Syria, pushing back against an August 6 government statement and revealing that she had been abducted and that her relatives had been coerced into signing official statements denying she was kidnapped but had left home due to “family disputes”.
The testimony by a member of the majority religion and sect in Syria suggests that the government’s claims that dozens of women and girls identified by UN experts as subject to abductions were actually running away voluntarily from family issues or for romance, were pretexts to cover up an issue now impacting even girls from the majority religious sect.
On August 2, a Christian man, Fadi Semaan, went missing on the Damascus-Saidnaya road.
A married Alawite mother of two, Reem Mohammed, is feared abducted after going missing on August 10 in Damascus, where she was looking for a home to rent.
Hala Nawras Ibrahim, a 25-year-old Alawite mother kidnapped in the coastal city of Jableh in May 2025 with her baby, released testimony published by the Syria Justice Archive on August 25 regarding her kidnapping and the role of government security forces.
She says she was tortured, her body cut with razor blades and her head shaved, as her captors sought to force her to sign a marriage contract with a member of General Security. “I heard other girls screaming in the place where they were holding me,” she said in video testimony.
A 12-year-old Alawite boy, Hamza Sarim, who went missing on June 4 while on his way to sell wild herbs in the Ghab Plain region of Hama has been missing now for more than four months.
Armed men on September 29 kidnapped Shiite high school student Mohammad Zaazouh in Homs city, last seen being forced at gunpoint into a yellow taxi with the abductors.
Young men from minority groups are especially vulnerable to detentions over the mere suspicion of ties to the previous regime.
On July 1, General Security forces raided two Kurdish-majority villages in Aleppo governorate, arresting dozens of young men under the pretext of cracking down on “regime remnants”. Locals protested, resulting in the injury of one woman by a member of the security forces.
Also on July 1, General Security forces reportedly detained three Druze men traveling from Sweida governorate to the capital, Damascus.
On July 4, members of the minority Ismaili sect protested in the central city of Salamiyah following the arrests of dozens of young men. Those detained had objected to Sunni Bedouins entering their city to harass local girls, but when government security forces intervened, they sided with the Bedouins and arrested the locals.
On July 19, Nihad Hassan, a convert to Christianity and pastor of The Good Shepherd Kurdish Evangelical Church in Lebanon, was detained by government security forces while visiting his family in Afrin in northern Syria. He was released after more than two weeks of detention.
On August 5, a Christian engineer, Tony Daniel, was arrested by General Security forces after criticizing corruption within the Syndicate of Engineers on a television program.
The manner of his arrest, “resembling an abduction”, as well as the charges, reportedly based on a singular complaint under Syria’s Assad-era cybercrime laws, sparked outcry from human rights activists and lawyers.
On August 6, more than 20 people were detained from the majority-Alawite village of Al-Ruqama in Homs governorate.
On August 20, general security forces carried out house-to-house raids and detained four men, all from the Alawite community in the towns of al-Mahrousa and Deir al-Salib in the central province of Hama.
General Security on September 24 arrested Alawite Sheikh Muhammad Bilal al-Ali, caretaker of the shrine of Sheikh Muhammad al-Burdi in the village of Safr in Homs governorate. General Security then prevented the village head from meeting with the sheikh, who was not given immediate access to a lawyer.
Suleiman Khalil, the former mayor of the Syriac Orthodox town of Sadad, who organized its defense against the Islamic State in November 2015, has been detained without charge and without access to a lawyer since February 2025.
Tartous governorate on July 6 fired 50 employees, the majority being members of the Alawite sect. In Latakia government, another 70 employees, also majority Alawite, were reportedly dismissed.
A private company that previously operated in Idlib governorate under President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s former Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, announced a July 9 auction for land leases in occupied Alawite villages in the central governorate of Hama.
A July 5 circular issued by the Ministry of Agriculture’s fisheries directorate instructed female employees that no part of their body should show except hands and face.
On July 27, gunmen from Qalaat al-Mudiq stormed the neighboring Christian town of Suqaylabiyah and opened fire near a café.
This is only the latest incident of harassment against the Christian town by its Sunni neighbors, including a violent pogrom in March and the forced closure of its main church, which has prompted consistent emigration. Residents continue to protest for the release of young men detained by the security forces.
Damascus governorate on August 1 shut down a licensed restaurant hours before its re-opening, citing a mixed gender pool and bar.
Christian communities in Saidnaya and Marmarita in the central province of Homs cancelled public celebrations related to religious feasts in August for the second year in a row, citing insecurity and sensitivity to families impacted by violence and detentions.
Three people were reported killed and dozens wounded on August 6 in the majority Druze district of Jaramana, when an IED was detonated inside a commuter van. A fourth victim, a Christian woman, succumbed to her wounds three weeks later. The area had seen Druze-led anti-government protests the month before, after which General Security forces reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” when dispatched to the area in a show of force.
On August 6, armed men riding a motorcycle attacked a majority-Shiite village, Umm Jbab, in Homs governorate, wounding six men by throwing an explosive device at the front of a house where a group of relatives were gathered.
The Christians of Al-Sawra village in Sweida governorate issued a statement on August 8 condemning the desecration of their cemeteries by occupying forces. Once a mixed Christian and Druze town, residents were displaced when government forces took over in July 2025 amid sectarian attacks against the Druze, and images have since emerged of looting and burning of the town, and most recently, the opening of graves.
Gunmen on August 21 entered the village of Kitloun in Hama governorate and opened fire on an Alawite man, Ali al-Ali, while he was working on his roof, causing him serious injuries.
On August 29, reports emerged of a looting spree against the Alawite town of Al-Sanobar in Latakia governorate, where some of the worst massacres of civilians took place in March 2025.
Locals closed their shops and sheltered indoors, with some fighting off attempted kidnappings while the rampage proceeded.
According to the Syrian Justice Archive, witnesses reported that a number of the vehicles involved in the attack had number plates from Idlib, the longtime stronghold of President Al-Sharaa and his Sunni Islamist forces.
Also on August 29, Islamist militants attacked a liquor store in the Christian town of Kafr Buhum in Hama governorate, creating panic in the town.
In early September, a career portal opened by the Ministry of Defense asked new graduates which parts of the Quran they had memorized and what mosque they attended, sending a public message that only Muslims were sought, and more specifically, that the government may discriminate against those not adhering to the Salafist beliefs or affiliations of the government.
On September 5, reports emerged of an effective siege against Sweida city and surrounding towns and villages, with the government refusing to allow repair teams to access power lines cut during hostilities five days before. The siege tightened in the week that followed, with General Security turning back traffic at checkpoints outside the city, and ongoing cuts to power, as well as water and fuel supplies.
On September 24, Turkmen and Bedouins carried out a pogrom against Alawite-owned shops in Latakia governorate, looting, destroying and shouting sectarian insults.
This quarterly report offers only a snapshot of the persecution faced by religious minorities in Syria. Christian Solidarity International will continue to report on these violations and bring them to the attention of the United Nations, as part of our Special Consultative Status at the UN Economic and Social Council.
