On 6 March, near the port city of Latakia,Al Jazeera reporter Riyad al-Hussein was shot while in the passenger seat of a car with a colleague. Both were clearly identifiable as journalists by their press helmets and vests. Riyad al-Hussein managed to film the shooting andshared it on Facebook.
Four days later,Mustafa Kahtan, a journalist for the Qatari channelAl Araby, reported beingtargeted by gunfirewhile driving to Latakia to cover the conflict. In aFacebook post published shortly after the incident, he and his colleague appear wearing bulletproof vests marked "press," showing the damage their vehicle suffered. "We were targeted twice," he stated in the video. "The first shot came through the car's roof. Then another bullet hit the front windshield, followed by a third."
JournalistSaleh Alfars from the media outlet Radyo Delal alsoreported an attack two days earlier when his car was shot at on the road leading to the city of Banias. The shooters ordered him to put down his weapons. "I said I was a journalist and had no weapons," he said in a video. The journalist recounted how he was taken to an apartment, detained and subjected to threats of torture and execution. He said he was released when his captors fled as the clashes flared up again.
Worries of a forgotten promise
In January 2025, following the Minister of Information’s promise to improve press freedom in the country, RSF publishedseven recommendations for the newly established government. Among them was the protection of journalists across the entire territory and the prevention of attacks against them. After the regime’s fall in December, RSF also called for an end to impunity for crimes committed against journalists and for Bashar al-Assad to be brought to justice. The ousted president and his allies are accused of killing 181 reporters since the revolution began in 2011 — part of the atrocities that caused Syria to rank second-to-last out of 180 countries in the 2024 RSFWorld Press Freedom Index.