Gunmen kill seven, wound four in Syria bus attack
The civilian bus was crossing Masyaf Bridge in the western Homs countryside on Wednesday evening, 30 September 2026, when masked men stopped it near a checkpoint. They posed as security forces and opened fire.
The passengers were employees of a private company and an employee of the Syrian Electricity Company, returning from work at the Hassia Industrial Zone in the southern countryside of Homs. The Syrian Network for Human Rights recorded that the gunfire was intense. Seven civilians died. Four were wounded. Two of the dead were brothers. The network entered the names of all seven into its database. No group claimed the attack. Authorities named no suspects and gave no motive.
Emergency teams and first responders transported the wounded to hospitals across Homs. At Homs Grand Hospital, director Maan Mahmoud Fahd said four people were declared dead on arrival. They had suffered gunshot wounds to the head and chest. He confirmed the findings to the state news agency Sana.
Security units cordoned off the scene on the bridge. Criminal investigators began collecting evidence, the opening work of an inquiry meant to identify those responsible and determine the motive. Brigadier General Bassem Mohammad Shaaban, commander of the Homs Internal Security Forces, set out the force’s position. “We will not allow criminals to threaten the security of our people or undermine the stability the city is experiencing,” he said. “We view this cowardly attack as an attempt to undermine security in Homs and destabilise the stability we have worked to consolidate. This crime will not go unpunished.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said all the victims were Alawite. Alawites are an ethnoreligious minority living primarily in Syria. They form the dominant religious group on the coast and in towns near it, following Alawism, a tradition rooted in an offshoot of Shia Islam. In 2025, coastal regions with high concentrations of Alawite residents suffered a wave of massacres and attacks that left more than 1,400 people dead. Nearly two years on, the security situation remained tense after more than thirteen years of war and the collapse of that government.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government has foiled numerous planned attacks and disrupted activity by armed cells. Deadly shootings and explosions have still struck Damascus and other parts of the country. The same Wednesday evening brought a second incident, this one against the gas lines that supplied thermal power plants in the Damascus countryside.
An explosion and fire erupted at a gas pipeline serving the Tishreen thermal power plant in Eastern Ghouta. The blast struck a pressure-reduction station at the plant entrance and damaged the two gas lines that supplied the plant. Two people were injured, state broadcaster Ekhbariya TV reported.
Without those lines, gas stopped reaching three thermal stations. Deir Ali, al-Nasiriyah and Tishreen all went offline for lack of supply. Tishreen lies about 36 kilometres from the capital. Fire broke out at the plant itself after the explosion. The Syrian Electricity Company warned that the shutdown would cut overall generation and temporarily lengthen electricity rationing hours. Abdelhamid Sallat, director of the Energy Ministry’s media department, said the interruption did not end with power. Water-pumping and purification stations across Damascus, Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra lost the gas they required to operate, disrupting drinking-water services for hundreds of thousands of people in the capital and the southern governorates.
It was the third hit on Syria’s gas network in six weeks. The previous two had come in that span, one of them only two days earlier in eastern Syria; the Syrian Petroleum Company had called those incidents sabotage. No group claimed Wednesday’s blast. The three stations stayed offline while the scale of the cut settled in.
Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir spoke at the Tishreen site late Wednesday. The fire had been brought under control overnight. Civil defence teams were conducting cooling operations on the damaged plant. Specialised crews would enter only after that work finished. “The cause of the Tishreen power station explosion is still unclear,” al-Bashir said. “It could be a technical malfunction, an attack or an act of sabotage. Specialised teams will inspect the site after cooling to determine the exact cause.”
On Masyaf Bridge the same evening’s other scene still held its investigators. Syrian forensic teams examined the civilian bus that had been stopped and fired on. Bloodstains and broken glass were visible inside the vehicle. Internal security kept the pursuit running, the stated aim to arrest the gunmen and bring them before the judiciary.
