On December 10, 2023, a group of gunmen attacked workers working on collecting stones for use in construction in the ‘badiya’ desert of al-Bouhamad in eastern Raqqa governorate. One worker was killed in the initial gunfire, while the rest were able to escape. When the workers who had fled returned to the scene to recover the body of their slain colleague, accompanied by Syrian regime soldiers, however, they discovered, on trying to move it, that the killers had rigged the body with explosives, with the resulting explosion killing three of the workers and two regime soldiers, and wounding three other people in the vicinity.
The area is under the control of Syrian regime forces. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) is still trying to locate eyewitnesses to obtain more information about the incident. We call on the controlling forces to uphold their responsibilities for protecting civilians in their areas, to investigate this incident, and to make the investigation’s findings known to the public. Syria will never have true stability without a genuine political transition process towards democracy within a fixed timetable.
