On the morning of December 4, 2025, Syria’s central Homs Province witnessed a new disappearance targeting a woman belonging to the Alawite community, amid a rise in kidnapping incidents and violations against civilians following the expansion of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s influence in multiple areas of Syria.
The victim, Walaa Saeb al-Assad, is a young Alawite woman from the village of al-Mashrafa in rural Homs, married and a mother of three children. She had arrived at the northern Homs bus station coming from the coastal city of Tartus, before she disappeared moments after the bus arrived. Since then, her family has been unable to contact her, and her whereabouts remain unknown.
According to reports from local sources, contact with Walaa was lost immediately upon her arrival at the northern Homs bus station. Despite repeated attempts by her relatives, no information has been received regarding her fate, with no official announcement of any responsible party or specific demands—heightening the family’s fears that she may have been kidnapped by an unknown group.
Walaa’s disappearance comes within a growing pattern of kidnappings targeting women from the Alawite community, most of which occur in areas under the control of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, where similar cases have been documented in recent periods.
Among the recently documented cases is the disappearance of Zeina Issa Mahmoud, also an Alawite woman from Tartus Province. Zeina went missing at noon on December 1, 2025, while at the Tartus city bus station, before her family received a short video call from her phone the next day. A man of unknown identity appeared in the call and directly stated that she had been “kidnapped” because one of her relatives worked in an institution affiliated with the former regime, while Zeina appeared bound inside a closed room. After the call ended, her phone was completely shut off, and no further news has emerged regarding her fate.
These incidents indicate a recurring pattern of enforced disappearance and kidnapping motivated by political and sectarian factors. This has been accompanied, according to local testimonies, by cases in which abducted women were subjected to torture, mistreatment, and sexual assault before some were released, while the fate of many others remains unknown.
The interim authorities affiliated with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham are accused of attempting to downplay the severity of these cases by spreading counter-narratives, pressuring families to change their statements, or publicly displaying some of the abducted women to deny the occurrence of kidnappings.
The disappearance of Walaa Saeb al-Assad represents a new link in a chain of escalating violations targeting Alawite women in various areas, amid the absence of effective protection mechanisms and secrecy from the controlling authorities. With ongoing cases of kidnapping and enforced disappearance without accountability, the lives and fates of a large number of women remain at risk and under the threat of disappearance.
