March 6 breaks the promise
Published 10 October 2026
On March 6, former-government fighters attacked General Security and Defence Ministry personnel near Beit Ana, close to the Latakia-Tartus highway. Information examined by the commission indicated four security members killed and fifteen injured while seeking to arrest a person associated with the former government. An attack on reinforcements killed another eighteen. The caretaker authorities launched an operation in Beit Ana and nearby Al Daliya. Helicopters and artillery were reportedly used. The commission treated this confrontation as the immediate trigger of the wider coastal crisis. The distinction between an armed opponent and a civilian became decisive as an operation against particular fighters expanded into violence across communities. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Security personnel were surrounded at several locations, including police stations, military sites and roads around Jablah. Former-government fighters blocked routes and attacked checkpoints. Officials described an ambushed reinforcement convoy and forces besieged across towns in Tartus governorate. Some captured personnel were subsequently found dead. The commission recorded accounts of bodies with restrained hands and of men reportedly killed after surrender. Those findings concerned crimes against government personnel, not only an army suffering battlefield losses. Their inclusion preserved the distinction between fighting and killing a captive. That distinction applied to both sides regardless of which side would later claim the greater number of victims. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Civilian movement along the highway became dangerous too. The commission recorded accounts of a car carrying women and children fired on by former-government fighters. Other witnesses described civilians wounded at checkpoints, including a woman who later died. A media crew withdrawing toward the Hmeimim bridge on March 6 was shot at, and a member suffered a leg wound. The staff wore protective clothing identifying them as press. Civilians were already losing protection at the opening stage of the crisis. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Medical institutions were caught in the fighting. Former-government fighters encircled Jablah National Hospital on the evening of March 6. Staff, urgent civilian patients and wounded security personnel remained inside after other patients were discharged. Grenades and rocket-propelled fire damaged the facility. A security member was killed by sniper fire. Negotiations failed when those inside refused to surrender weapons. Staff eventually left without guarantees. At Al Nour private hospital, fighters confined personnel, confiscated phones, required treatment of wounded fighters and stored ammunition. An ambulance was reportedly stolen and later found damaged. The hospitals' ability to care for civilian victims was being compromised while the number of victims was about to rise sharply. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
The commission distinguished interference with medical work from physical destruction. Tishreen University Hospital and the adjoining blood bank in Latakia had not suffered significant structural damage in the incidents examined, although fighting disrupted services. At Jablah, reinforcements later evacuated wounded security members to a mosque used as a makeshift hospital. A witness described patients including an elderly man, a six-year-old girl and security personnel, from both Sunni and Alawi communities. The account resisted the division being imposed outside: medical need did not follow the communal categories through which fighters were mobilizing. Protecting a hospital meant protecting people whose circumstances differed, not treating the building as an extension of one armed camp. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On March 6, SANA announced military reinforcements heading toward Jablah. The coastal highway was closed and curfews imposed. Forces associated with the Defence Ministry arrived from elsewhere, alongside groups and individuals taking up arms spontaneously. Online mobilization included explicitly sectarian language. The commission identified a Telegram channel impersonating the Military Operations Command that had more than seventy thousand followers. Its posts threatened Alawis and distributed footage of humiliation. Its impersonation matters: material claiming an official identity was not necessarily an official order. It also demonstrated how a false claim of institutional authority could amplify mobilization while making it harder for civilians to distinguish sanctioned operations from threats circulating in the state's name. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Calls spread through social media and mosque loudspeakers in several cities. The commission described rhetoric directed at the Alawi population broadly, rather than a conventional recruitment appeal targeting a specified armed enemy. At 12:40 a.m. on March 7, the Interior Ministry urged civilians to stay away from military operations, respect law, avoid incitement and protect people and property. Sharaa later warned that attacks on defenceless civilians and punishment for others' crimes would bring accountability. These official interventions belonged in the chronology. They established that the authorities publicly rejected the collective violence. They did not establish that every force already entering the coast had obeyed the rejection or could be brought under control in time. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On March 7, a journalist near the Deir Elbishel bridge was fired on, abducted and held with a civilian from Homs. Captors beat and threatened the men before they escaped when reinforcements arrived. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Shir, east of Latakia, experienced arriving convoys early on March 7. The commission recorded successive groups entering and looting homes. One family lost three men after attackers separated relatives, took the men away in the family's car and left their bodies nearby. Other groups subsequently returned to steal what remained. The report also examined verified videos of unarmed men being beaten and shot. Witnesses estimated up to sixty-five killed that morning; the commission verified fourteen. A former juvenile detention official was reportedly among Shir's dead, called by name at his home before being killed. His brother and three sons were killed too. These accounts reveal why identifying a person formerly employed by the state could not explain all the surrounding deaths. Even where an attacker selected one man by name, his relatives were not thereby implicated in whatever offence the attacker associated with him. The repeated entry of different groups made the household's vulnerability cumulative. A raid ending did not mean danger had ended, because another party could arrive without treating the previous attack as a reason to leave survivors alone. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
At Mokhtariyeh, near the M4 highway, shooting around a checkpoint began on the evening of March 6. A large convoy arrived the next morning. The commission recorded at least 128 deaths and verified fifty-five. Its accounts described men and boys taken to fields, a warehouse, streets and homes and killed after questions about identity. Victims included older men, young twins, a local official and a person with visible disabilities. Witnesses identified the presence of former Syrian National Army factions, foreign fighters and General Security. The report preserved separate levels of attribution rather than assigning every death to a single unit. What it documented consistently was the targeting of civilians through communal identity across multiple locations. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Baniyas carried its own history of abuses under the old government. Its southern neighbourhoods were predominantly Sunni, while northern areas were mostly Alawi. On March 6, former-government fighters attacked security personnel, including at a police station in Al Qusoor. The following morning, a convoy entered that neighbourhood. The commission reported at least 253 deaths there and verified thirty-eight. Home raids included shootings, theft, beatings and abduction. In one case four men and a sixteen-year-old boy were taken after questions about identity and weapons; their bodies were later identified in an online video. The chronology kept the original armed attack visible without allowing it to explain away the subsequent selection of civilians for death. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
In Tal Salhab, northwest Hama, General Security had checkpoints and had conducted settlements before imposing a curfew on March 6. Raids began the next day. A detained man described being held in a former-government facility, beaten, threatened and confined in an underground room he believed contained hundreds. He was released after four days without questioning. The report also recorded killings, looting and former soldiers attacked despite settlement. The physical reuse of an old detention site was especially stark. The new authorities did not need to reproduce every feature of Assad's apparatus for a survivor to encounter familiar forms of humiliation and overcrowded custody under the successor state. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Al Qabu Al-Awamiyah had General Security checkpoints before March. Residents had complained about detention and beatings at one, prompting a reported personnel change. Many men had also completed settlement. On March 7, armed groups entered; the commission confirmed six deaths out of forty-four reported. More than a hundred and twenty homes were reportedly looted and burned over subsequent days. General Security was present while killings and theft occurred. The report did not resolve every perpetrator's identity. It recorded a village that had already interacted with official settlement and complaints procedures, only to discover that those interactions did not provide reliable protection when a larger mobilization arrived. The removal of property in Al Qabu included solar panels, inverters and a generator as well as money and electronics. Those items mattered in a country where households depended on improvised ways to obtain power. Destruction was not limited to valuables readily converted into cash. It removed the means of maintaining ordinary functions after the attack. Survivors sheltering in agricultural land could see looting continue after residents fled. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Witnesses in Jablah saw convoys arriving from Aleppo and Idlib by the evening of March 7. Men on motorcycles travelled alongside vehicles with mounted weapons. Some wore masks and lacked insignia. Raids moved from house to house. Residents described questions about whether families were Alawi, threats, beatings and theft. In documented killings, men were separated from women and children after their identity was established. A woman told the commission that attackers took her husband and a son outside while shooting another son inside. She found the two taken away dead as well. The report placed this account within a repeated pattern. The household had not been presented with an accusation to answer through a legal proceeding. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
In Snobar, south of Latakia, an old army camp had become a training site for new personnel. Residents had heard shooting before the crisis, including during the evening of March 6. Around three hundred armed men entered on March 7, according to accounts assembled by the commission. Witnesses described flags and insignia associated with different former opposition factions, military uniforms and civilian clothes, and foreign fighters. The report recorded an estimated 216 deaths on March 7 and 8, of which it verified twenty-nine. Those numbers had different evidentiary status. Reporting the larger estimate without the verification limit would overstate what the commission had independently established; reporting only twenty-nine would conceal the wider alleged scale it was examining. Snobar's accounts included groups of men and boys executed in different locations, beatings causing lasting injuries and women threatened with sexual violence. Some attackers invoked retaliation for earlier suffering under the Assads. The report also recorded General Security members present during the violence, including a case in which personnel offered protection to a woman's house. Presence was therefore not a complete description of conduct: some members could protect civilians while other forces nearby committed crimes. The central question was whether protection could be made systematic rather than dependent on encountering the right individual. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Rasafa, in the Masyaf area, had checkpoints and a curfew too. Witnesses told the commission that most men had settled their status, while those refusing had left. There were no reported nearby military clashes before the curfew. Raids from March 7 to 9 nevertheless killed at least sixty-five civilians according to reports examined; the commission verified twenty-four. Families described abduction, executions and theft. Women and children were among the dead. Relatives collected bodies when they judged it safe and buried some near homes. That account undermined a blanket claim that settlement protected everyone or that each attacked village had been a battlefield. The report kept local circumstances separate instead of importing the coastal crisis's origin into every place it reached. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Some Al Qusoor residents escaped through contacts with officials or security personnel. Witnesses described escorts passing checkpoints and one family's driver affirming that those aboard were with the state. Others stayed until vehicles took Alawi civilians to Masakin school on March 8. General Security distributed food there and resisted armed people who reportedly tried to enter during the night. The same institutional name appeared in accounts of protection and in the wider record of failures and violations. The evidence did not support a simple picture in which every state employee behaved identically. It supported a more demanding conclusion: civilian safety depended too much on uneven conduct within forces claiming to operate under one authority. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Looting accompanied the killing. Valuables, electronics and cars were taken, and possessions loaded onto pickup trucks. Bodies remained on streets from March 8 through at least March 10. Fighting, closures and threats impeded collection. Some relatives kept bodies inside houses for days. Hospitals lost capacity just as they needed to identify and preserve the dead: ambulances were missing or damaged, morgues overflowed and power failed. These were linked consequences of the crisis. The violence removed members of a family; the disrupted services then obstructed the family's effort to recover and bury them. Without documentation, a known death could also become a future dispute about identity or civil status. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On March 9, Sharaa established a national panel and a committee intended to maintain civil peace. The authorities largely regained control and ended the most severe violations by March 10, according to the commission. That was an important limit on the chronology, not proof of complete safety afterward. Revenge attacks, abductions, property occupation and fear continued to be reported. Nor did regaining control settle responsibility for what happened during the gap. The state now faced questions about direct perpetrators, commanders, recruitment, prevention and its response as information arrived. Announcing a panel opened a process. Whether that process could reach every affiliation and rank remained an unanswered test. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
In Shir, other families struggled to bury relatives, sometimes keeping bodies for days. A fourteen-year-old boy was reportedly shot during a burial. The violence exceeded any individualized claim of responsibility and continued into acts of mourning that should have been protected from armed interference. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Families searching Baniyas hospital found morgues crowded with bodies. Others buried relatives in a mass grave at Sheikh Ihlal cemetery. Witnesses said General Security prevented burial in family villages and insisted on the cemetery in Baniyas. Some survivors had not received death certificates when interviewed. The commission's team later visited the burial site. Even where the state helped collect bodies, rules governing burial could leave families without the rituals or records they sought. The aftermath required identification and civil documentation alongside prosecution. A relative could know exactly who had died yet still lack the formal recognition needed to administer property, family affairs and the status of children left behind. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025