Abdul Karim, a 60-year-old doctor, was working at the Hama National Hospital in early February 1982 when forces loyal to Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s former president, and his brother Rifaat, began rounding up civilians and preparing to execute them.
The physician — who, like others interviewed for this essay, asked New Lines to use only his first name, still being traumatized by a massacre that took place over 40 years ago — would go on to lose his 18-year-old son to a sniper in the Hadir district of the central Syrian city.
On that day, Feb. 3, 1982, Abdul Karim and about 100 civilians, including young men and women, were lined up against a wall in the neighborhood of Baroudiya. Each individual was assigned a number. A tank was then brought to the site and the civilians were lined up according to their assigned numbers. Abdul Karim, who was number 73, described how the Syrian military used the tank to execute the civilians by running them over. Some young men, refusing to lie down under the tank, were stabbed instead.
He recalled a father and son who were among those lined up for execution. The son’s turn came first but the father begged the soldiers to kill him instead, or at least let him die before his son. The request was denied and the soldiers stabbed the boy to death in front of his father.
When the executions reached number 71, Abdul Karim and the person before him prepared for their turn. However, a military order suddenly halted the executions, redirecting the forces to another area for further raids. The remaining individuals, including Abdul Karim, were released.
“I was in a state of psychological panic for more than three months from the horror of the scene and narrowly escaping death,” he said.
Hama has a long and storied history. It witnessed massive demonstrations in 2011, involving tens of thousands of protesters, who filled the central Assi Square in defiance of Bashar al-Assad’s rule. Its reputation for dissent dates back to 1982, when it became a symbol of opposition after the infamous Hama Massacre, a brutal crackdown ordered by Hafez al-Assad to secure his regime’s control.
Hama suffered extensively under the Assad family’s 54-year rule. Its people endured massacres, arrests and oppressive security measures, and were systematically excluded from leadership roles to prevent the city from emerging as a threat to the regime.
The massacre in Hama that began on Feb. 2, 1982 remains one of the bloodiest events in Syria’s history. Lasting 27 days, it was orchestrated by the paramilitary force known as the Defense Companies under the command of Hafez al-Assad’s brother, Rifaat. It also involved several divisions and brigades of Syria’s regular army, acting on direct orders from the president. According to Hama residents and eyewitnesses, an estimated 20,000 troops stormed the city to carry out the assault.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that the massacre claimed the lives of approximately 40,000 civilians, with around 17,000 still missing. Yet residents of Hama speak of even higher figures, suggesting as many as 60,000 civilian deaths.
The Assad regime justified its actions by claiming it was combating the expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. The Brotherhood’s military activities were concentrated in Hama but also extended to areas such as the Idlib countryside, Jisr al-Shughur and certain neighborhoods in Aleppo. Arbitrary arrests of civilians began escalating in 1980, as Hafez al-Assad tightened his grip on power, with a particular focus on dignitaries and community leaders in Hama. This crackdown culminated in orders to storm the city, effectively crushing the opposition.
One account, shared by Bilal, the son of a detained Hama doctor, sheds light on these events. Bilal’s father was accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and was arbitrarily arrested in late 1979 at his clinic in the Hadir area of Hama by the General Intelligence Department in Kafr Sousa, Damascus. Initially detained for three years, he was later transferred to Tadmur Prison in Palmyra in 1988. His family received no information about him for years and presumed him dead. Eventually, and remarkably, he was released in late 1999.
Bilal recounts the stories his father told him about his transfer to Tadmur. Upon arrival, the prisoners were met with beatings and various forms of torture. His father often returned to his cell severely injured, as a “pile of blood,” with his facial features unrecognizable for an entire month. In one incident, a prison guard stood on his chest and neck in an attempt to kill him, but he resisted and survived.
Bilal also shared details about the poor medical conditions in the prison. The cells were overcrowded, measuring no more than 21 square yards, and blood from torture stained the floors. Pus oozed from untreated wounds and diseases spread rapidly among the prisoners. Despite the lack of medical supplies and proper care, Bilal’s father, who was a doctor, performed an emergency appendectomy on a fellow prisoner inside the cell.
The tools used were improvised: a sharpened piece of metal — a fragment of a Syrian pound coin — served as a scalpel, while a small metal skewer was shaped into a needle for stitches. Threads were fashioned from nylon bread bags provided by the prison, twisted until they resembled surgical thread. The tools were cleaned using orange juice, which was occasionally distributed in small quantities.
The operation was performed without anesthetics and, while the patient developed infections afterward, it ultimately saved his life at the time.
Bilal recounts that when his father was released from Tadmur, the family did not initially know he had been freed. The prison administration gave each released prisoner only 100 Syrian pounds for their journey home, which forced them to share a taxi with eight others to return to Hama. His father was wearing an olive military uniform and worn-out white shoes. His body was emaciated and his beard, mustache, hair and eyebrows had been shaved. The prolonged period of hunger had altered his appearance so drastically that his family barely recognized him when he knocked on their door unannounced.
Yusra, a 40-year-old housewife from Hama and the daughter of a detainee in Mezzeh Military Airport Prison in Damascus, said her father, an electrical engineer at the Hama Electricity Directorate, was accused of collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood during the events of 1982 and was detained for three years. He passed away in 2014.
Yusra recounted stories her father told her about his time in prison. She recalls him describing how he was tortured, including having all his fingernails pulled out. He spent over a year in solitary confinement. Later, a young prisoner from Hama, no older than 13, was placed in his cell alongside him.
According to Yusra, her father spoke of the severe torture the boy endured, as he was accused of helping the Muslim Brotherhood identify the positions of Assad’s forces during the assault on Hama. This information was allegedly used by Brotherhood fighters to target regime forces. Eventually, Yusra’s father was transferred to another cell, while the boy remained in solitary confinement. His fate is unknown.
Nizar, a 60-year-old man from Hama, recounted his experience during the storming of the city in 1982. He was detained for a week when Assad’s forces attacked. “After the Defense Companies surrounded Hama on the morning of Feb. 1, 1982,” he said, “they began storming the city using heavy artillery and warplanes, which indiscriminately bombed neighborhoods. Entire areas were wiped out and have not been rebuilt to this day, including the Zanbaqi (in Hadir), Kilaniyeh, Sharqiyah, Shamalia, Sheikh Anbar, Baraziyeh, Mahalba and Sinaa neighborhoods.”
After seizing control of the city, Assad’s forces engaged in clashes with armed Muslim Brotherhood members who were defending Hama. Yet the regime’s forces soon turned their focus to civilians, storming several neighborhoods in the Hadir area of central Hama. They raided homes and arrested men and boys aged 12 to 75, often indiscriminately.
Nizar described how the forces used collective punishment and field executions to exert pressure on civilians. “On the afternoon of the first day,” he said, “a large number of men were gathered inside a shop on March 8 Street and were executed by gunfire. They were civilians from the neighborhood, taken from their homes.”
While Nizar was an eyewitness to the March 8 killings, other incidents he recounted were confirmed by elders who survived the Hama Massacre and have become lore, the details of which are well known to the slaughter’s survivors.
“Hundreds of men and boys were rounded up from various neighborhoods and taken to an area near the municipal stadium in Hama,” he said. “There, more than 100 young men and women were selected at random, lined up against a wall and executed by firing squad in front of the other detainees.”
Nizar also described field executions in the Souk al-Shajara neighborhood of Hama, where men and teenage boys standing at the doors of their houses were executed. He spoke too of the massacre on Abu al-Fida Street, where Assad’s forces targeted the al-Musa family. When the forces stormed the family’s home, the head of the household pleaded with them not to harm the occupants, explaining that only women and children were present. Despite this, the forces began the execution by first shooting a baby girl in front of her parents. They then killed the women and girls in the house before finally executing the men. According to local residents, a total of 20 people from the family were killed.
Nizar also described another massacre at the Industrial High School in Hama. Men and boys from various neighborhoods were gathered at the school, where Assad’s forces used iron clamps — tools typically used to secure industrial parts — to crush the heads of civilians.
Abdul Karim, the doctor who survived the executions on Feb. 3, said the violence during those weeks extended to the hospital where he worked. He recounted a massacre at Hama National Hospital during the early stages of the assault. Assad’s forces stormed the hospital, located in the southern Malaab neighborhood, and killed many of the patients, including those in operating rooms and intensive care units. The exact number of victims remains unknown due to the chaos and fear at the time. The doctors and nurses were spared. Abdul Karim described how soldiers entered the operating rooms, using surgical scalpels to mutilate and kill patients under anesthesia. He said he saw piles of bodies being moved with bulldozers and left in the hospital yard, many of which bore signs of torture and abuse.
With the outbreak of the Syrian revolution on March 15, 2011, the Assad regime, then led by Bashar al-Assad, continued its legacy of violence. On June 3, 2011, Hama witnessed another massacre. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 65 civilians were killed by gunfire from the Military Security Branch forces.
Mohammed al-Abed, a field activist at the Hama Media Center and a survivor of the 2011 massacre, recounted the events of that day. Following Friday prayers in Hama, residents gathered to march peacefully toward Assi Square, the city center, to protest against Bashar al-Assad’s regime and call for his resignation. The demonstrators had coordinated through social media, planning to carry flowers to symbolize the peaceful nature of their protest and to urge security forces and the army not to respond with violence.
When the demonstrators arrived at Assi Square, near the governorate building, they were met with a sudden barrage of live bullets fired by security forces stationed in the tall surrounding buildings. According to al-Abed, the demonstrators tried to flee, still holding their flowers and, in some cases, their children. The gunfire, however, pursued them through the streets, resulting in the deaths of dozens of civilians, including children. Al-Abed described one tragic moment in which a father, carrying his child on his shoulders while chanting against Assad, realized his son had been killed only when he felt the child’s blood dripping onto his hands.
The crackdown extended beyond gunfire. Forces from the Military Security Branch and other security units pursued demonstrators with vehicles, raided nearby homes and arrested over 200 young men that day. Government hospitals were prohibited from receiving the wounded or dead, and ambulances were ordered to remain stationary by the head of the Military Security Branch. Private hospitals were also warned by officers not to treat the injured demonstrators, with threats of consequences for those who violated these orders.
Reflecting on Hama’s current state, al-Abed said that the city’s joy over Syria’s liberation from Assad’s rule is even greater due to the long history of oppression and violence it has endured. During the Assad family’s rule, there was scarcely a household in Hama without a detainee or a victim of regime violence.
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