15th crime in regime-held area in January | Child shot dead by unidentified persons in Qalamoun Al-Gharbi in Rif Dimashq

Rif Dimashq province: Reliable sources have informed SOHR that a new murder was committed in regime-controlled areas, when a child under the age of 18 was killed in Hafir Al-Fouwqa town in Rif Dimashq.

According to the Syrian Observatory, the child was shot by unidentified gunmen, while he was working at a “supermarket” in Hafir Al-Fouwqa town on Monday evening.

Accordingly, SOHR sources have documented 15 murders since early 2022, where domestic violence was behind some murders while motivations behind the others remained unknown. These murders left 15 people dead: five children under the age of eighteen, four women over the age of eighteen and six men. The fatalities are distributed regionally as follows:

• A young lady in Damascus.

• A child, a little girl and a young man in Rif Dimashq.

• A man and two women in Tartus.

• A baby and two young men in Hama.

• A young woman, a little girl, a baby and a young man in Al-Suwaidaa.

• A man in Deir Ezzor.

SOHR would like to point out that the rate of murders committed under diverse reasons and motivations, including retaliation and domestic violence, in regime-controlled areas has been alarmingly increased, and this indicates that more murders are expected to be committed in light of the security vacuum and chaos in these areas.

We, at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), renew our appeals to the international community to intensify their efforts to reach a political settlement that could potentially put an end to the Syrian conflict and the suffering of Syrian people who have been grappling with chronic crises, including severing security vacuum throughout Syria, during Syria’s protracted war which has been raging for nearly 11 years.