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Yerevan Silent As Concerns Reignited For Syrian Armenians

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said at the weekend that at least 745 civilians belonging to Syria’s Alawite minority were killed in two days of clashes between security forces and fighters loyal to the ousted regime of Bashar al-Assad in the Latakia province.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Syria's interim authorities to hold accountable the "radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis" who have committed "massacres against Syria’s minority communities" in recent days.

"The United States stands with Syria's religious and ethnic minorities," Rubio said in a statement.

The Aleppo-based Armenian-language newspaper Kantsasar reported that two Syrian Armenians are among the civilian victims. It said Antoine Boutros and his son Faty were shot dead just outside the coastal city of Latakia. A local Armenian church cancelled a Sunday mass.

Hagop Altunian, a former Latakia resident who moved to Armenia years ago, said his relatives and friends living in the area have told him that they now live in fear.

“They don’t leave their homes because they are scared,” Altunian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday. “They are even scared of talking by phone. Things are very tough for the local people. The Christians are in trouble.”

In an Arabic-language voice message, a friend of Altunian living in a local village told him that he and his family are hiding in a forest because they have heard that government forces killed 233 residents of a neighboring community.

![Syria - Mourners attend the funeral of Shinda Kisho who was killed in Latakia in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, Qamishli, March 9, 2025.](https://gdb.rferl.org/1c34fb39-a408-4957-a1a1-d6cdaa494fac_w250_r1_s.jpg)

Syria - Mourners attend the funeral of Shinda Kisho who was killed in Latakia in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, Qamishli, March 9, 2025.

Dalida Kahejian, another Syrian Armenian now based in Yerevan, on Sunday again spoke by phone with her daughter living in Kessab, another coastal town in the Syrian province.

“She has no electricity and their schools and churches are closed … They are thinking about getting out \[of the country,\] but they don’t have valid passports right now,” said Kahejian.

The Armenian government has not yet commented on the worst outbreak of violence in Syria since the fall of Assad’s regime. Some of its domestic critics have renewed their calls for official Yerevan to organize or facilitate the evacuation of Syrian Armenians.

Contacted by RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the Armenian Foreign did not say on Monday whether it is now worried about the security of the Armenian community. The Armenian Embassy in Damascus could not be reached for comment.

Many in Armenia already had such concerns when the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist militant group swept to power in December. The new Syrian government formed by it assured the remaining Syrian Armenians and other minorities that their security and rights will be protected.

There were no signs of a serious Armenian exodus from Syria before the reported massacres in Latakia. An Armenian deputy foreign minister visited Damascus in January.

An estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenians, most of them descendants of survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, lived in Syria before the outbreak of its civil war in 2011. At least half of them reportedly fled the country during the war. Thousands took refuge in Armenia.

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