Daraa: Assassination of Baath Party Branch Secretary and his Family

The attack is the deadliest since the start of a series of assassinations in the area, according to al-Modon.

An unidentified armed group attacked the house of the former secretary-general of the Baath Socialist Party branch in the Daraa governorate, Kamal al-Atma, in the northern city of al-Sanamayn. They killed him along with four other members of his family.

The attack is the deadliest since the start of a series of assassinations that resulted from insecurity linked to the Syrian regime’s control of the governorate since mid-September 2019.

Local sources told al-Modon that unknown assailants attacked the house of Atma in Sanamayn and shot everyone inside it. They killed the target’s relatives: Khaled, Zakaria, Ahmed, and Mahmoud al-Atma. They also seriously injured Kamal’s wife and Mahmoud’s mother, who were taken to the city hospital.

On Tuesday, a military force of ten armoured vehicles stormed the town of Nahata in the eastern governorate’s countryside, arresting two of its inhabitants. All popular mediation with the Syrian regime failed to release the girl Shifa Abazid from the Air Intelligence Branch in Damascus.

Abazid was arrested on Thursday by the air force intelligence after she entered the branch on the basis of a review paper handed over to her on her way back from Lebanon early last week to take an exam at Damascus University, according to Ahrar Horan.

The group quoted a source in the regime as saying that the arrest of the girl comes in the context of “perpetuating chaos in the governorate with the aim of restoring its security grip on it, carrying out Iranian projects and spreading Shiism among the people of the governorate.” They explained that these militias, most notably the Lebanese Hezbollah, “practice widespread violations focused mostly on carrying out assassinations against opponents of the regime and Iran, as well as promoting and smuggling drugs across the governorate’s borders with Jordan.”

The Syrian regime had arrested 11 Syrian refugees returning from Lebanon illegally, despite the alleged amnesty issued by Syrian regime president Bashar al-Assad at the end of April.