ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Unidentified assailants killed at least 10 people in a village in central Syria’s Hama on Friday, reported a war monitor.

The attack occurred in Arza village in Hama’s northwestern countryside, which is an area mainly inhabited by Alawites - an ethnoreligious group closely associated with the Assad family.

“The gunmen knocked on the doors of houses in the village and opened fire on the citizens with individual weapons equipped with silencers, before fleeing to an unknown destination,” said UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Saturday.

Thousands of Alawites held protests in the cities of Tartus, Latakia, Homs, and Qardaha in late December, after an attack by armed groups on the shrine of “Abu Abdullah Hussein Al-Khasibi, the Sheikh of Alawites worldwide,” in Aleppo, in which five of the shrine’s servants were killed.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) on Friday said that the new government in Damascus cannot on its own "assume security responsibilities and ensure the security of vital facilities and points of tension throughout Syrian geography," citing ongoing clashes across the country, escalation in hate speech among Syria's different components, and the "difficult humanitarian conditions" of tens of thousands residing in temporary camps and shelters in north and east Syria.

According to SOHR, over 220 people have been killed for their religious affiliations in “acts of retaliation” across Syria since the start of 2025.