Under facilitation by Lebanese Hezbollah | Cars with Lebanese number plates swamps Homs city
Homs city and surrounding villages have experienced prevalence of modern cars since early 2024.
SOHR activists in Homs have confirmed the prevalence of cars with Lebanese number plates in the neighbourhoods of Homs city, especially the neighbourhoods whose residents support the Syrian regime and which regime soldiers and officers hail from, such as Al-Zahraa, Wadi and Al-Muhajereen.
SOHR activists have reported that those cars have suddenly “invaded” Homs city, where they are transported to Homs in two ways.
The first way is to bring in such cars through unofficial crossings between Lebanon and Syria under supervision of military commanders of the Lebanese Hezbollah. The second way is manifested in transporting the cars through the official border crossing of Dabosah, after obtaining visit cards valid for six months in return for sums of money estimated to be 35 USD each car.
Speaking to SOHR, the owner of an auto office in Al-Sitteen street in a pro-regime neighbourhood “the price of cars in Syria has reached to a level unaffordable by the most residents who want to buy a car; this spurred influential member of Hezbollah to work on facilitating the crossing of cars from Lebanon through both unofficial crossings and Dabosah official border crossing. For example, the price of a Mercedes 300 exceeds 350,000,000 SYP, equivalent to 22,000 USD, on Homs markets, at a time when a resident can get a Mercedes 300 for no more than 90,000,000 SYP, equivalent to 6,000 USD, with the help of Hezbollah. The considerable gab between the price of cars in Syria and Lebanon has spurred a large number of officers to get cars brought from Lebanon. The owners of cars brought from Lebanon are not liable to get state-subsidised fuel, like the owners of other private cars in Syria. However, regime officers who have cars brought from Lebanon are able to get subsidised petrol by devious means in the centres of their service, so they have never cared about securing the needed fuel. Moreover, those officers enjoy immunity according to which officers are not stopped by patrols of traffic police and military checkpoints deployed in Homs city and its outskirts.”
On the other hand, SOHR activists have reported that the cars with Lebanese number plates, which are brought into Syria via informal crossings, are used in rural areas in Homs province, where their owners are not obligated to cross through checkpoints or travel on main roads where they may be stopped by police patrols.