Cars are parked at the gate of the Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia on March 13, 2025. (Credit: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)
On March 7, Samar* hastily left her village in the Jableh countryside. Along with her husband and relatives, she fled — like thousands of Syrians — to the Russian airbase at Hmeimim. Terrified, they sought shelter in a tent pitched on the runway. Days later, Samar learned from a cousin that her father and uncle, who had stayed behind, had been killed."She went to visit them and saw my father lying on a couch, a bullet in his chest, and my uncle on another couch with a bullet to the head. She didn’t want to worry us and told us they were fine until the following Monday when she revealed the truth," Samar says.Starting on March 6, violent clashes erupted on the Syrian coast between security forces of the new government and loyalists to the former regime of Bashar al-Assad. The fighting quickly took on a sectarian dimension,...
On March 7, Samar* hastily left her village in the Jableh countryside. Along with her husband and relatives, she fled — like thousands of Syrians — to the Russian airbase at Hmeimim. Terrified, they sought shelter in a tent pitched on the runway. Days later, Samar learned from a cousin that her father and uncle, who had stayed behind, had been killed."She went to visit them and saw my father lying on a couch, a bullet in his chest, and my uncle on another couch with a bullet to the head. She didn’t want to worry us and told us they were fine until the following Monday when she revealed the truth," Samar says.Starting on March 6, violent clashes erupted on the Syrian coast between security forces of the new government and loyalists to the former regime of Bashar al-Assad. The fighting quickly took on a sectarian...