What can I possibly tell you? I wish that morning had never come. I wish I had never been a psychologist or a psychological support worker, nor had I answered the call to go to the stricken villages along the coast. How will I ever recover from what I saw? How will I erase the sight of children’s empty, terrified eyes, their pajamas stained with involuntary urination, the screams and wails of women, the stifling scent of blood and burning homes? I had worked for years in my city of Latakia with those displaced by the massacres of the former regime in Idlib and Aleppo. I had stood alongside survivors of the devastating 2023 earthquake. Yet, I had never managed to build a psychological shield strong enough to keep me from becoming entangled in people’s suffering. And now, death clings to me again—like a leech, draining my soul. I wish I had died before witnessing this, fading into oblivion.
That day, my small psychological support team and I arrived in the village of Mukhtariyya in the Latakia countryside—three days after the massacre. Reaching the village was a perilous journey, I knew that well, especially on roads still open to death. Yet something pulled us forward, an invisible force we couldn’t resist. The closer we got, the louder the screams and wails of women grew. Then, the bodies began to appear—men lying by the roadside, one by one, then another, and another, until they formed a heap—dozens of lifeless bodies. Most were dressed in pajamas, house clothes, some barefoot. Women searched frantically through the bodies, their cries piercing the cold air. A woman knelt beside a man in black pajamas, sobbing: “Oh God, my father and my brother… Oh Jaafar… Jaafar, Jaafar, oh God!” Another woman wailed over a young man’s body: “I wish they had shot me, my son… just shot me!”
Nearby, a group of village children stood at the edges, silent, watching. The wind stirred the blankets covering some of the bodies, revealing faces riddled with bullet holes. It was clear—dozens of men and young men had been executed here, their bodies slumped against the wall of a village house, leaning on one another.
On March 7, 2025, at 8:30 am, Mukhtariyya woke to the sounds of heavy gunfire and RPGs. Those in the streets at the time were struck down by bullets, while others were hit inside their homes. The wounded lay bleeding in the streets, dying without anyone able to reach them.
“For three days, they didn’t allow us to bury our children. Every time we women went out to collect the bodies, they shot at us. All I could think about was burying my only son, Hamoudi. Hamoudi was my only son—he had never carried a weapon or anything. By God, I went out, and under a hail of bullets, I carried him, I hugged him, and they killed me. By God, I worked in farming just so he can live, to clothe him, to feed him.”
The mother wailed, her cries unrelenting as she held up a picture of Mohammed Maryam, telling me the story of his murder. Mohammed was just 24 years old, a university student. Many men in his family had been killed that day. In the other hand, she clutched a photo of Qusay Isber, a high school student, no more than 18 years old. Though he was her sister’s son, he had been like a son to her. She had raised him after his mother died when he was just a child. His father, Louay Isber, had also been killed.
“We raise our children with endless care, pouring our hearts and souls into them as they grow. Then, with a single bullet… in just a moment… they’re gone—just like that!”
The mother began to wail again. A young woman, who had graduated just a few months earlier with a degree in electronics engineering, tried to tell me what had happened. She spoke calmly, carefully choosing her words, but that only made me worry for her more. Beneath her composure, she was clearly struggling under the weight of her shock. She told me about entire families in the village that had been wiped out—the Abdullah family, the Shatouri family, the Huwaijah family, the Shaaban family, and so many others.
“At first, we thought they were just searching for weapons, so we stayed indoors and locked our doors. We had nothing to fear—we had never carried weapons, and we didn’t have any in our homes. We told ourselves there was no reason to be afraid. Then we heard takbeers (Allahu Akbar) echoing through the streets, followed by the sound of Quranic recitation blaring from loudspeakers. We were confused—why would this be happening? Then, the screams of women and children started rising from every direction. That’s when we realized a massacre was approaching. We decided to flee. We left our home and ran toward the nearby woods, each of us scattering in different directions, seeking refuge in the orchards and wilderness.”
Then, convoys of vehicles and armed men started pouring into the village from the direction of the shire. They looked unfamiliar, like they didn’t belong here. They went from house to house, dragging the young men out while sparing the elderly. They forced them to crawl on the ground, mocking them, making them imitate animals. They beat them on their heads and bodies with iron rods.
“Have you seen the video they released of what they did?! Did you see that old man? That’s… that’s our neighbor—a helpless peasant. And that young man? Yes… he was a university student.”
The armed men wore desert-colored military uniforms, their beards long, their mustaches shaved. Some were in civilian clothes. One of them shouted: “If God helps you, none can defeat you, and if you fight them, they will turn their backs on you.”
At the start of the invasion, the village headman, refusing to flee, stepped forward and confronted them.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“Who are you?,” the uniformed man asked.
“I am the village headman.”
The gunman raised his weapon, pressed it against the headman’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. His lifeless body collapsed onto the land he had spent his life tending, left to decay for days.
“We returned to the village from the orchards. The houses had been looted and ransacked, some burned to the ground. There was nowhere left to hide. So, the women and children of the village formed a convoy and made their way to Jabryoun, where we gathered in the mosque. The young woman speaking had retreated into an eerie, unsettling calm.”
Far from Mukhtariyya, in the village of Brabshbo, deep in the Latakia countryside, the situation was even worse.
Homes were burnt and looted. Charred cars littered the roadsides and the entrances to houses. Entire families were forced to sleep in the bushes for days. Those who survived the massacre and remained in their homes were too afraid to step outside.
An old man approached me and thrust a piece of paper in my face. It contained the names of all the villagers he had managed to count among the dead.
“I’m a psychologist, uncle. Numbers don’t concern me. Every innocent victim is a massacre in itself,” I told him.
The old man broke down, sobbing.
Samir Shaheen–the sick man who was killed in his own bed. His body is still there. The mother who had been sitting on the same sofa for days, speaking to her son as if he were still beside her. Rami Salman Shaheen, a mathematics professor, had come to bid farewell to his mother before leaving to teach at a university in an Arab country. They killed him with a single bullet. I saw the audiovisual hallucinations in more than one case, as if the specters of the dead still lingered, unwilling to leave the spaces they once filled. And the children—almost every home bore witness to the horror they had endured. Cases of involuntary urination were everywhere. I saw it again: the urine-stained pajamas, the vacant, unblinking eyes.
Mothers pressed photos of their murdered children into my hands, their voices breaking as they pleaded: “Why did they kill them? Are these remnants? Do they carry weapons?!” I had no answers.
There was Najm Othman, Kinan Shaheen too, a first-year medical student and the other a first-year dentistry student respectively. Kinan’s mother clutched his photo, sobbing. Here, too, the executions were brutal, up close. The faces of the dead in their photos were shattered, pierced by bullets. The shock was unmistakable in the devastated face of a young girl whose friend, Sarab Yousef, along with her entire family, had been executed—shot in the face. For days, she had barely eaten. Whenever she tried, she saw Khawla’s mutilated face flashing in her mind. Yet, despite all this, most villagers barely spoke of what had happened. The fear of the militants’ return—whose faces, weapons, and the death they inflicted still surrounded them and haunted their memories—rendered them unable to even talk about the loss of their loved ones.
A girl with a five-month-old baby on her lap sits in shock after seeing the bodies of her husband, father, and brother.
When I left that village for another, I thought that what the victims needed—beyond food and blankets—was sedative medication, simply to help them absorb the full horror of what had occurred. I say “absorb,” not “accept,” because accepting a loss through a tragedy like this is a long, long road that will demand immense effort—and I’m not sure it will ever be fully achieved.
In the village of Al-Shir in the Latakia countryside, bodies still lay by the roadside and were piled up in the village square, victims of the executions on 7 March 2025. I walked among them, observing their faces and smelling the stench of death in the air. Here too, people were not allowed to bury the bodies of their children and loved ones. In the narrow alleys of a nearby hamlet, bodies were covered with grass and twigs. The villagers believed this would hide them from prying eyes, ensuring that no one would come and take them—at least, that they wouldn’t be burned or buried in distant mass graves. Every time a woman tried to carry a body for burial, she was shot. The same scenario repeated in every village I visited, in the same order, as if it were systematic. Jaber al-Sheikh, the gastroenterologist; his brothers, engineers Hussam and Aktham; and their father, Ghassan al-Sheikh—an entire civilian family—were wiped out, along with dozens of other families in Al-Shir. They were killed without question. The militants entered homes, dragged the occupants out, and shot them. The massacre began at the houses overlooking the main road, while many of the residents living further inland managed to escape into the woods. Could it be the curse of geography? As I said, the same scenario was repeated in most of the villages subjected to these massacres.
In that house where I sat with his family, the father’s body lay before me—still on the sofa! Everyone around him, including myself, seemed detached from reality, as if we were conversing with him as if he were still alive. Have I lost my mind? Is it me? Have I been infected by the contagion of absence?
That old woman next to the body, wrapped in a woolen scarf, could only hope to bury the bodies of her children and husband next to the house—that was all she wanted at that moment.
I can hardly speak anymore; I feel like I’m suffocating! It seems my profession is a curse—it always has been. I wish I could rip out my heart and cast it aside so that the pain would finally stop. I don’t think I can continue.