Four nurses were killed and a fifth was injured, all of them from the Alawite sect, as a result of an armed attack on a taxi that was transporting them in front of the private Al-Kindi Hospital in the city of Homs, in an attack carried out by an armed group on the evening of Thursday, 8 January 2026.
The deceased victims are: Mazen Al-Asmar, Layal Salloum (engineer), Alaa Wannous, Dhu al-Fiqar Al-Zaher, and the injured person, Osama Dioub.
This incident comes in the context of an escalation of violations against civilians in Homs Governorate during the same period. In the western Homs countryside, local sources reported the killing of the young man Jamal al-Din Abi Ibrahim, a civilian from the village of Fahl and belonging to the Alawite sect, after his arrest by the General Security apparatus affiliated with the temporary authority, against the background of his participation in a peaceful demonstration that took place in the town. According to the information, the young man was arrested during the demonstration and then disappeared for several days, before his family received news on 6 January 2026 that his body had been found inside one of the hospitals in the city of Homs, about ten days after his arrest. The available information indicates that his killing occurred during detention.
On the evening of 5 January 2026, three civilians from the Alawite sect were killed in the village of Abu Hakfa east of the city of Homs—Farhan Maaref and his son Montajab Maaref, and Mohammad Shaaban (schoolteacher)—as a result of direct gunfire carried out by masked gunmen on a grocery shop in which they were present.
The killing of engineer Osama Abdul-Mu’in Khaddour was also documented. He was an Alawite civilian who was arrested from his home in the Al-Sabeel neighborhood in the city of Homs on the evening of 30 December 2025, before his family received news on 1 January 2026 of the presence of his body in the morgue refrigerator at Al-Waer Hospital. In addition, Wael Faraj Al-Fouani, a civilian belonging to the Shiite sect, was killed in front of his shop in the Al-Walid suburb in the city of Homs on 1 January 2026.
The killing of the nurses, along with the other documented incidents in Homs Governorate during the same period, reflects a worrying pattern of serious violations of the right to life and personal security, amid a state of security breakdown, the absence of effective accountability mechanisms, and the lack of sufficient guarantees to protect civilians, particularly in areas under the control of the temporary authority.
