Mystery Gunmen Slaughter Seven People On Bus In Syria’s Homs

Via Middle East Eye

Gunmen in Syria killed seven people and wounded four others after opening fire on a civilian bus in western Homs province on Wednesday evening.

The bus was carrying company employees returning home from work when it came under fire as it crossed the Masyaf Bridge in the western Homs countryside, according to the Homs Health Directorate.

Security units were immediately deployed to the scene to secure the area, while criminal investigators began collecting evidence to identify those responsible and determine the motive, according to Homs Internal Security Forces commander Brig Gen Bassem Mohammad Shaaban.

The injured were taken to hospitals across the governorate, while security forces began an investigation.

Maan Mahmoud Fahd, director of the Homs Grand Hospital, told Sana that four individuals were declared dead upon arrival, after suffering from severe gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

No group has yet claimed responsibility, and authorities have not named any suspects. Shaaban vowed to pursue those responsible, saying the attack would not go unpunished.

“We view this cowardly attack as an attempt to undermine security in Homs and destabilise the stability we have worked to consolidate,” Shaaban said.

“We will not allow criminals to threaten the security of our people or undermine the stability the city is experiencing,” he added.

The ambush was one of several recent attacks to raise security concerns in Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024.

Brigadier General Munir al-Hariri, a Syrian military analyst, told Syria TV that former Assad loyalists were most likely behind Wednesday’s attack, which he said aimed to destabilize security in the country. [ZH: We should note the presence of the literally hundreds if not thousands of jihadist groups, many of them foreign, unleashed on Syria during the height of the CIA/NATO/Gulf-backed proxy war to overthrow Assad].

In August, a bus carrying members of the internal security forces was targeted near Damascus, while an explosive device exploded on a passenger bus in Jaramana, southeast of the capital, wounding 14 people earlier that month.

Gas pipeline blast

The bus attack was one of three major security incidents to hit Syria on Wednesday. A gas pipeline explosion at the Tishreen thermal power plant in Syria’s Damascus countryside on Wednesday evening forced three power stations out of service, the Syrian Electricity Company said, warning that the shutdown would cause longer scheduled power cuts.

The blast triggered a large fire and injured two people, according to state broadcaster Alikhbaria. The explosion hit a pressure-reduction station at the plant entrance and damaged the two gas lines that supply it, the Syrian Petroleum Company said.

The loss of gas supplies shut down the Deir Ali and Nasiriyah plants, along with Tishreen, which lies about 36km from the capital.

Abdul Hamid Salat, director of the energy ministry’s media department, said the interruption to gas supplies had also affected water-pumping and treatment stations, disrupting services for hundreds of thousands of people across Damascus and its countryside, Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra.

Speaking at the site late on Wednesday, Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir said the fire was brought under control overnight. Al-Bashir added specialists would inspect the site once civil defense teams finished cooling it, to determine “the causes and circumstances precisely”.

Authorities have not yet established whether the explosion resulted from a technical fault, a deliberate attack or sabotage.

Israeli incursion

Israeli forces fired three artillery shells at the area around al-Mantara Dam in Syria’s southern Quneitra province on Wednesday. No immediate casualties or damage were reported.

On Thursday morning, Israeli forces also entered the village of Saida al-Golan in southern Quneitra with around 12 military vehicles as students were making their way to school. The forces later withdrew towards villages in the Yarmouk Basin, with no reports of arrests or house searches.

Reports from Al-Araby News outlet indicate that there was an assassination attempt on a Ministry of Defence officer in the city of Sanamen, situated to the north of Dara.The shelling came amid continued Israeli military activity in southern Syria.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces carried out incursions in Quneitra, including an operation in which soldiers questioned and assaulted shepherds, according to Syrian state media.

The latest developments also come days after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said talks with Israel on a security framework had reached nearly 90 percent agreement before Israel withdrew or introduced additional conditions.

Speaking at an Atlantic Council panel in New York last week, al-Sharaa said several rounds of negotiations had taken place over the previous year with US involvement and that the talks were continuing.