The seventy-year-old driver Hussein Salameh (Abu Majd), a member of the Alawite sect, was subjected on Sunday, November 30, 2025, on al-Thawra Street opposite Palestine Station – Tartous, western Syria, to a bloody assault in broad daylight while he was driving his taxi. A man stopped him under the pretext of taking a taxi ride, and after the car set off, he asked him about his sect.
According to the content of the circulating statements and what was published on social media, “as soon as he answered that he was Alawite, the assailant pulled out a sharp knife and attempted to slaughter him by the neck.”
According to the circulating information, the attacker’s seating angle “did not allow the slaughtering attempt to be fully carried out,” which enabled the victim to resist the attacker. A number of local residents intervened at the scene and managed to subdue the assailant and arrest him. He is the person seen lying on the ground in the circulated video.
Warning: This video contains graphic content (18+)
It was reported that the perpetrator is named Ali al-Bashir, from the al-Barraniyya neighborhood in Tartous, and he owns a shop for selling sausages. After residents arrested him, he was handed over to the “General Security” affiliated with the interim authority “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.”
Less than an hour after his arrest, it was announced, according to what was published, that the perpetrator “is mentally ill,” with a report about his health condition being circulated. This, in turn, sparked angry reactions given the clear sectarian motives.
This incident comes after the Syrian coast and the central regions of the country, on November 25, 2025, witnessed a wide wave of peaceful demonstrations at 42 locations, concentrated in areas with an Alawite majority, demanding “an end to killing, kidnapping, and forced arrest, the release of detainees, and the adoption of a federal system of governance.”
It also comes amid an “escalation of hate speech against multiple sects, religions, and ethnicities in Syria,” especially after Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham extended its control over the area, which has contributed to increasing societal division and fueling violence, alongside the continued absence of accountability for the inciters, most of whom are close to the interim authority.
