Mr. Mazen al-Youssef, a member of the Alawite community, was found killed on the morning of 18 December 2025 near the door of the printing shop where he worked, at the corner of the Cultural Center in the city of Homs, western Syria.
Mazen al-Youssef was among the earliest volunteers in the Red Crescent organization and previously worked as the head of a point in the al-Zahraa neighborhood in the city of Homs. He later moved to work in a small printing shop near the Cultural Center, where the incident occurred.
The killing of Mazen al-Youssef comes within a broader context marked by an increase in incidents of killing, kidnapping, and violations against civilians from the Alawite community in various parts of Syria. On the morning of 15 December 2025, armed men riding a motorcycle directly opened fire on the citizen Mousa Ahmad Ismail, a civilian from the Alawite community who worked in gas distribution and owned a shop in the al-Wuroud neighborhood of the city of Homs, leading to his immediate death in front of his store. The attack took place in an area very close to a detachment belonging to the “General Security” linked to the temporary authority represented by “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham,” as the victim’s shop is located adjacent to that detachment.
On 14 December 2025, local sources documented the abduction of the father Ghiyath Kanouj and his son Ahmad Kanouj while they were working on their agricultural land on the al-Furn road in the village of al-Saboura in the countryside of al-Salamiyah, east of Hama Governorate, by armed men affiliated with the General Security of the temporary authority. The two victims work in agriculture, and the abduction was carried out openly in front of the villagers.
The young man Mohammad Hallani, a civilian from the Shiite community, was also killed on 14 December 2025, after being subjected to direct gunfire by an armed group, in front of his shop in the al-Tadamon neighborhood of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
The incident of the killing of Mazen al-Youssef, along with the other cases mentioned, reflects a worrying escalation in the targeting of civilians, particularly from religious and sectarian minorities, in the absence of official information about the identity of the perpetrators or the fate of the abducted persons, and the continued impunity from accountability in areas under the control of the temporary authority.
