SyrianArmenians — Security forces loyal to the interim Syrian government ride in the back of a vehicle moving along a road in the western city of Latakia on March 9, 2025

International

Concerns Reignited for Syrian Armenians

March 11, 2025

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The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

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By Anush Mkrtchian

YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — Armenia is monitoring the latest developments in Syria, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, March 10, amid renewed concerns about the security of Syria’s Armenian community raised by the reported killings of hundreds of civilians blamed on Syrian government forces.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said over 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.

US 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 Kantasar reported that two Syrian Armenians are among the civilian victims. Their report said that Antoine Boutros and his son Faty were shot dead just outside the coastal city of Latakia.

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The Armenian Foreign Ministry said, however, that there have been no Armenian casualties in the worst outbreak of violence in Syria since the fall of Assad’s regime.

“The Consulate General of the Republic of Armenia in Aleppo is in contact with local authorities and community structures,” it said in a statement to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.

“In recent days, there has been no change in the content of applications addressed to the Consulate by Armenian citizens: they mainly concerned current consular issues.”

An Armenian church in Latakia canceled 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 March 10. “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.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

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Dalida Kahejian, another Syrian Armenian now based in Yerevan, on Sunday, March 9, 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’s domestic critics have renewed their calls for official Yerevan to organize or facilitate the evacuation of Syrian Armenians.

Many in Armenia have already voiced concerns about the security of the Armenian community 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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