On 23 December 2025, the two brothers Hussein Ahmad Salloum and Mohsen Ahmad Salloum were killed in the village of Beisin, Belonging to the Masyaf countryside region, within the al-Ghab Plain in the western countryside of Hama, following an armed attack that targeted a farm on the outskirts of the village.
The two victims were civilian brothers from the Alawite sect and were working on one of the farms located within the boundaries of their village.
According to available information, a group of unknown armed men carried out an armed robbery at the farm at dawn on the day of the incident. During the operation, the attackers opened fire directly on the two brothers, killing them instantly. The gunmen then drove approximately 400 heads of sheep away from the farm before leaving the area.
The bodies of the two brothers were later found inside the farm, with no information reported about the arrest of any suspects as of the time this report was prepared.
The identity of the perpetrators has not been officially established. However, activists accused armed groups affiliated with the temporary authority “Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham” of being behind the incident, in the absence of any announced measures of accountability or investigation.
The killing of the two brothers comes amid a context of escalating violations against civilians from the Alawite sect in Hama Governorate and its surroundings. On 20 December 2025, two civilians were killed and five others injured, including a 15-year-old minor, as a result of a sectarian armed attack that targeted residents of the predominantly Alawite village of al-Saboura in the eastern countryside of al-Salamiyah.
Local sources also documented the abduction of Ghiyath Kanjou and his son Ahmad Kanjou on 14 December 2025 while they were working on their agricultural land on the al-Forn Road in the village of al-Saboura.
In a related context, on the evening of 21 December 2025, six young men were subjected to a violent assault inside one of the farms in the town of Taldarah in the western countryside of al-Salamiyah by a masked armed group, resulting in multiple injuries, including a head laceration, a shoulder dislocation, and other injuries of varying severity.
Taken together, these incidents reflect a worrying escalation in killings, abductions, and physical assaults against civilians—particularly members of religious and sectarian minorities—amid the absence of official information regarding the identity of the perpetrators and the continued state of impunity in areas under the control of the temporary authorities.
