Mur*der rate in October 2022 |17 civilians, including women and children, ki*lled in 14 mur*ders in regime held-areas

Since early October 2022, regime-held areas have seen an alarming escalation of crime rates, in light of the failure of regime security services of the Syrian regime to put an end to the chaos and rampant security chaos that prevail across Syrian provinces which are under the control of regime forces.

These crimes were committed with various motives and reasons, most notably “theft, revenge, or honour” and other reasons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented 14 murders that left 17 civilians dead, and they are as follows:

• Three women.

• Two children.

• 12 men and young men.

The fatalities are distributed regionally as follows:

• Al-Suwaydaa: Two civilians: A child and a man.

• Rif Dimashq: One young man.

• Hama: four civilians: Three men and a woman.

• Deir Ezzor: A woman.

• Damascus: A man.

• Idlb: A man.

• Latakia: Two civilians: A man and a child.

Here are further details of these crimes that have been documented by SOHR:

• October 1: Residents of Bab Hood neighbourhood of Old Homs found the body of a woman in her fifties strangled ins her home by unknown persons after stealing money and gold jewellery.

According to medical sources, the woman died after being beaten with a sharp tool on the head and strangled to death.

• October 3: A 17-year-old girl from Shahba city in Al-Suwaydaa countryside was killed in mysterious circumstances. The girl was shot in the abdomen and died before arriving at the hospital. The girl’s parents are silent, and the reasons and details behind the murder remain unknown.

• October 6: Two young men were killed, and another was critically injured, who was moved to Salmiyah hospital, when unidentified gunmen shot them in Rasm Al-Ahmar village in eastern Hama countryside in regime-held areas.

• October 7: Three civilians from Talbiseh city in northern Homs countryside were killed after being shot directly by a Lebanese Hezbollah-backed drug trafficker.

• October 8: Residents found the body of a young man murdered under mysterious circumstances, whose body was dumped on the outskirts of Hafir Al-Fawqa town in northern Rif Dimashq. The identity of the perpetrators and the motives for the crime remained unknown.

• October 10: A woman in her 60s was found dead in her house in Al-Mayadeen city in Deir Ezzor countryside in areas held by Iranian-backed militias, where her cousin, a member of Liwaa Al-Quds, tortured her and mutilated her body then fled to Homs province, after stealing 3,000,000 SYP and gold jewellery from her house.

• October 15: The residents found the body of a man in his fifties with gunshot wounds in the vicinity of Masyaf city in western Hama countryside. The uncertainty surrounded the murder of the elderly man.

• October 19: The residents of Hayish town, which is under the control of regime forces and their proxy militias in southern Idlib countryside, found the body of a man in his fifties was found near Hama-Aleppo highway.

• October 20: Local authorities found the body of a child dumped in a waterwheel in Ras Ibn Hani district in Latakia, after the child had been absent from his home for more than a month.

• October 22: a civilian was killed when a man’s car run over him on Thursday, October 20, in Naba’a Ara area in western Al-Suwyadaa countryside over a money dispute.

• October 24: cleaners found the body of an unidentified man in his forties dumped inside a bag, with his head and four limbs separated, dumped next to a waste container in Al-Zuhur neighbourhood, south of Damascus.

• October 29: A man beat his wife and then strangled her to death because of a dispute over her pregnancy in Salamiyah, Hama countryside. The security services intervened to investigate the circumstances of the crime.

• October 29: A fight erupted in a wedding hall in the Armenian neighbourhood of Homs city over beating a girl by a child at the wedding party, which soon evolved into armed fighting. A group of gunmen has fired indiscriminately, killing one person.

• October 30: The body of a young man was found with gunshot wounds inside his workplace in southern Raml neighbourhood of Latakia.

The Syrian Observatory has documented 127 murders in regime-controlled areas since early 2022, where domestic violence and armed robbery were behind some of these murders, while motivations behind the others remained unknown. These murders left 138 civilians: 23 children, 24 women, and 91 men, dead. The fatalities are distributed regionally as follows:

• Al-Suwaydaa: 33 civilians: four children, including an infant, three women, and 26 men.

• Rif Dimashq: 23 civilians: six children, five women, and 12 men, including an Iraqi man.

• Homs: 19 civilians: Two little girls, four women, and 13 men.

• Hama: 14 civilians: an infant, four women, and nine men.

• Daraa: Ten civilians: four children and six men.

• Deir Ezzor: Nine people: Six men, a child, and two women.

• Aleppo: Seven civilians: an infant and six men.

• Tartus: Seven civilians: Three women, three men, and a child.

• Damascus: Six civilians: a woman and four men.

• Latakia: Six civilians: two women, two children, and two men.

• Al-Raqqah: Two men.

• Idlib: A man.

• Al-Quneitra: A child.