Today, 16 July, marks the anniversary of the storming of Sweida National Hospital in 2025, during the campaign of genocidal massacres carried out by Bedouin armed groups alongside fighters affiliated with the Syrian government’s Ministries of Defense and Interior.
Sweida National Hospital is the city’s only central public hospital. With a capacity of 450 beds, it serves the entire governorate of Sweida, as well as patients from the Syrian Badia and the eastern countryside of Daraa.
According to the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, medical staff were forced to kneel in the hospital corridor on the day the facility was stormed, and one volunteer was executed, as documented by the hospital’s surveillance cameras. Images that later circulated also showed dozens of bodies piled up inside the hospital and in its surrounding grounds.
In this investigation, physician and writer Najat Abdul Samad brings together the testimonies of doctors, nurses, technicians, hospital employees, and volunteers who were on duty during the siege of Sweida National Hospital by tanks and its subsequent storming. To document the events in detail, most witnesses requested anonymity, asking that neither their names nor their medical specialties or hospital departments be disclosed, out of fear that they could be identified.
“I Saw Vast Numbers of Wounded Patients, Spilling into the Hallways”
Throughout Sunday and Monday, 13 and 14 July, Dr. L.R. was on duty at one of Sweida’s private hospitals. During those two days, the hospital received around 100 wounded patients from the western and northern countryside of the governorate, far beyond its capacity. The doctor recalls that while the medical team performed surgery on those who needed it, the hospital soon became unable to cope with the growing number of casualties. He therefore decided to continue his work as a volunteer at Sweida National Hospital.
On the morning of Tuesday, 15 July, the attackers reached the city. Snipers spread across the streets, turning anyone who ventured outside into a target. Dr. L.R. describes how a physician already working at the National Hospital risked his life by driving to pick him up.
Dr. L.R. recalls:
“We entered the hospital through the rear entrance because it was safer and farther from the main gate, where snipers had taken positions on the rooftops of nearby houses. We went straight to the operating department. I saw enormous numbers of wounded people, overflowing even into the hallways. I knelt beside a patient with a leg injury and clamped his artery with surgical forceps to stop the bleeding until an operating table became available. I performed about ten emergency chest decompressions right there in the corridor, along with countless minor procedures, including placing central venous lines for many patients. I did not even have time to put on surgical gloves. The few seconds it took could mean the difference between a patient living or dying.”
In addition to the overwhelming number of casualties, many of whom were critically injured, the hospital was operating with fewer staff than it would have on an ordinary working day. Dr. L.R. explains:
“Around half of the hospital staff were unable to report to work because the roads were blocked or too dangerous to cross. We had only one orthopedic surgeon and two anesthesiologists in the entire hospital. That was how the whole day went: nonstop work, without sleep.”
Among those who had also joined the hospital as a volunteer on Sunday, 13 July, was surgeon Talaat Amer, one of Syria’s most accomplished surgeons. Since 2011, he has treated victims of the Assad regime’s bombardment in hospitals across Daraa and the Damascus countryside. By the evening of Tuesday, 15 July, he had performed around 27 operations on his own.
Dr. L.R. recalls:
“Surgeon Talaat Amer worked continuously for three days without sleep. He left the hospital at around six in the evening to check on his family and get some rest before returning the next day. We only wish we had insisted that he stay and prevented him from leaving. We had no idea what awaited him, or us.”
A.A., a medical student who had been studying for his exams, woke on the morning of 14 July to the sound of gunfire surrounding his neighborhood. As his neighbors began to flee, he decided to volunteer at the National Hospital.
“I told myself that the thing I cared about most in our house was my books,” he says. “If they broke in, they would not care about them, so I hid our valuables among the books. The only thing I took with me was my computer. I had no idea that I would never sit those exams, or that they would burn down our house with all my books inside.”
At Sweida National Hospital, A.A. helped move patients on stretchers, dress wounds, hang IV fluids, clean the emergency department, and wash its floors.
“The first blood sample I drew for testing was from a patient who, like many others, had been wounded when a drone struck their vehicle. They were covered in blood. By the morning of 15 July, according to the emergency department’s records, 50 people had already arrived dead, and around 200 others had been admitted with injuries.”
A.A. says that many of the casualties came from the Maqous neighborhood.
“There is one case I will never forget,” he recalls. “A man arrived with devastating facial injuries. His eyes had disappeared beneath the swelling. He said they had tied him to a car and dragged him along the road. That was when the weight of it all began to sink in.”
The medical student says the hardest part emotionally was seeing the emergency department filled with women and young girls.
“They were all wearing the clothes they had been at home in. Their clothes were covered in dust, and all the color had drained from their faces. One young woman had shrapnel lodged high in her thigh. I was so overwhelmed that I could not bring myself to approach her. I stepped out into the corridor to catch my breath before returning to work.”
He also recalls the arrival of a pickup truck loaded with bodies.
“A nurse called me over to help transfer them to the morgue. The first body I tried to carry had been so badly damaged that I could barely keep hold of it on the stretcher. I remember crying out, ‘Oh God, oh God.’ I could not hold myself together anymore. I walked out of the hospital and headed home. I tried not to think about how dangerous the roads were. I found myself reciting prayers, some I knew and some I did not, expecting that a bullet would strike me at any moment. The streets were empty. There was no movement, no sign of another person. Only a terrifying silence, with debris scattered everywhere.”
At 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, 16 July, Dr. L.R., who was in the operating department, received word that the body of Talaat Amer had arrived at the hospital.
“I ran down to the morgue immediately,” he recalls. “I was moving faster than I thought possible, still hoping that maybe he was alive. I found him lying on top of the other bodies at the entrance to the morgue because the refrigerated compartments were already full. How can I describe what I felt? He was my colleague and my friend. Just yesterday, we had been fighting side by side to keep the wounded alive.”
Nearby, Amer’s wife was weeping.
“They shot him… they shot him… Talaat was on his way back to the hospital. I called to make sure he had arrived, but a stranger answered the phone. He asked me to describe my husband. I said, ‘He’s a doctor wearing green surgical scrubs.’ He replied, ‘His green scrubs have turned red.'”
Dr. L.R. continues:
“I rushed over to check for a pulse. It was hopeless. A bullet had struck him in the head. It entered behind his right ear and exited through the left side of his forehead. His face was covered in blood. The surgical scrubs he had left the hospital in the day before were soaked in blood. I asked the head nurse to place his body in a body bag and set it aside, then I hurried back to the operating department.”
“I Had No Time to Think About My Fear”
On the afternoon of Wednesday, 16 July, nurse Y.A. recalls how the hospital came under siege by two tanks, one positioned at the main northern entrance and the other at the southern gate.
“The tanks shelled the ambulances, the windows of the emergency department, and the intensive care unit,” he says. “The windows shattered under the bombardment.”
At the same time, Dr. Q.S. was in the middle of an operation while the sound of shelling thundered around him. He struggled to keep his concentration despite the chaos.
“The window of the operating room was hit, and its glass exploded inward. Everyone in the operating theatre was shaken. The anesthesiologist instinctively ducked to protect his head. My colleagues kept shouting, ‘Watch out. Get down. Move away.’ But I kept saying, ‘Just two more stitches. I only have two more stitches to close the wound.’ At that moment, I had no time to think about my fear, or the sweat soaking through my clothes, or my hunger, or the overwhelming exhaustion from having gone three days without sleep.”
The Storming Begins
Nurse S.H. recalls that at around 4:00 p.m., armed men wearing the uniforms of the General Security Directorate forced their way into the hospital carrying assault rifles.
“At the entrance to the emergency department, they killed two of the wounded,” he says. “Then they went inside and sealed off the department. They ordered that no one was to enter or leave the hospital. Some of them climbed onto the hospital roof to take sniper positions. We later learned that other snipers had positioned themselves on the rooftops of the nearby Health Directorate building and the nursing school.”
Nurse M.S. describes what happened next:
“Armed men wearing General Security uniforms entered the emergency operating area. They asked the patients, ‘Are you Druze?’ They then shot some of the patients and wounded people in the chest as they lay in their beds, while shouting insults such as, ‘Filth’ and ‘Pigs.’ They ordered some of them, ‘Howl, you dog.’ Then they turned to us, the medical staff, and asked, ‘Are you Druze?'”
She continues:
“They separated the men from the women. They forced all of us to kneel and confiscated our mobile phones. One of the gunmen asked for a pair of scissors and used them to cut the mustache of an elderly Druze sheik as he lay in his hospital bed. They also violently tore a necklace from around the neck of one of our fellow nurses, saying, ‘This is immorality and heresy.'”
Nurse M.S. describes the killing of volunteer engineer Mohammad Bihsas:
“He offered one of the armed men a bottle of water, saying, ‘Here, I had just brought this for myself to drink, but it looks like it’s meant for you.’ The gunman grabbed the bottle, threw it aside, and insulted him, calling him ‘ apig.’ He then reached out and shoved him. Mohammad pushed the gunman’s hand away and was about to respond to the insult when the gunman shot him in the chest.”
She continues:
“Another armed man grabbed Mohammad by the legs and dragged him across the floor. His blood left a wide trail stretching from where his colleagues stood all the way across the hall as they pulled him to the far end.”
“The gunmen then demanded the passwords for the hospital’s surveillance cameras. A group of them went to the technical office. We later learned that they confronted Wael Azzam, the engineer responsible for the camera system. He refused to give them the passwords, so they killed him and began smashing the cameras. Perhaps, in the end, the truth was served by the fact that they did not destroy all of them. The remaining cameras captured footage of the assault, images that were later broadcast by the media.”
Dr. L.R. was in the operating department when he learned that armed men had stormed the hospital, though they had not yet reached the second floor.
“I received a call from Dr. Talaat’s widow,” he recalls. “She said, ‘Talaat’s body is still lying among the piles of corpses.’ I went down to the morgue with another doctor and two nurses. There, I found the body of the volunteer engineer Mohammad Bihsas. By then, the bodies had piled up on top of Dr. Talaat’s body and all around it, spilling out into the corridor outside the morgue. I recognized my colleague and friend only by his leg, his surgical scrubs, and his black clogs.”
“We pulled him out. I asked for water so I could wash away some of the blood. One of my colleagues reminded me, ‘A martyr’s body is not washed.’ So I only cleaned his face. I asked for a body bag. I removed his wedding ring from his finger. It stayed with me for two months before I was finally able to meet his wife and return it to her. I placed his body in the bag and wrote on it with a marker: ‘The late martyr, Dr. Talaat Amer.'”
Dr. L.R. continues:
“My colleague noticed that one of the gunmen was watching us and whispered, ‘Don’t write the word martyr.’ I immediately realized that, in their ideology, the title of ‘martyr’ was reserved exclusively for their own followers. I tried to erase the word with my fingers and water, but it would not come off. Someone brought me a piece of gauze soaked in alcohol so I could remove it while the gunman stood there watching. We then placed his body by itself on a wooden table that had been stored beneath the staircase opposite the CT scan department. Only then did I feel that I had managed to give my colleague, my friend, and my fellow frontline doctor at least the most basic measure of dignity. After that, I returned to the operating department.”
He continues:
“They eventually reached us. Their first orders were that no one was to enter or leave the department or go near the windows. The gunmen seemed to be surveying the area, almost surprised by how large the operating department was. We were afraid. I think they were afraid, too. They repeated their orders not to move around or approach the windows, then asked us, ‘Are you Druze?'”
Dr. L.R. recalls how they remained frozen in place, expecting to be executed at any moment.
“We sat there for what felt like an eternity. During those hours, not a single patient reached us. We later learned that throughout the time they besieged the hospital and held us captive, they were shooting every injured person brought to the hospital for treatment. They died outside the hospital and on the surrounding roads. They were killing anyone who appeared on any road.”
Dr. Q.S. was the only physician in his specialty at the hospital. He worked alone for two days before two colleagues finally managed to reach the facility.
“I performed around 25 operations by myself. Only a month before the attack on Sweida, I had undergone major surgery myself. Yet since 13 July, I had been working without interruption. My colleagues and I slept on sheets of cardboard, using our operating room clogs as pillows, while blood covered the floor around us. One of my colleagues would force me to eat pieces of bread with thyme before taking the medication. I could not go without.”
Dr. A.D. says that 15 and 16 July were by far the most difficult days, as the majority of casualties arrived during that period.
“There were about 55 doctors, including both staff and volunteers, and around 100 nurses and other personnel,” he says. “We did not sleep for a single moment. We performed around 150 operations. We worked amid relentless shelling and unimaginable psychological pressure. The work itself was the only thing that kept us from surrendering to it. We had been inside the hospital since 13 July and could not leave because replacement teams were unable to reach us due to the shelling and sniper fire.”
He adds:
“I do not know if any hospital has ever endured an assault like this: first a siege that cut off electricity, water, and food, followed by shelling and a military assault. I still do not know where our team found the strength to hold on for six days under bombardment, treating thousands of wounded people while hundreds of bodies accumulated around us. We kept working without interruption, with no reinforcements, no supplies to make up for the shortages of essential medical equipment, and without food, rest, or sleep.”
Those we interviewed all agreed that around midnight, the armed men began withdrawing after receiving orders to retreat. They left in stages, with the last of them departing at around 6:00 a.m.
After the Assault: Recovering the Dead
At dawn on the morning the attackers withdrew, a young man’s voice echoed through the streets, calling on the people to emerge.
“Wake up, Bani Ma’rouf… wake up and help gather our martyrs. I am from the village of Harran. I am calling you in the name of Murshid. I am Hassan Murshid, son of the martyr Wajih Murshid. Wake up… our martyrs are lying on the ground. Come, let us collect them.”
Then came the ululation of a woman.
This is how those who were there described the scene. Testimonies gathered over the months following the assault from doctors, nurses, and volunteer paramedics at Sweida National Hospital also shed light on how the bodies were recovered and handled.
From 13 to 20 July, the National Hospital endured a week of relentless exhaustion. Bodies accumulated faster than they could be processed. Some had been shot in the head at point-blank range. Human remains lay scattered across roads, in front of homes and burned-out shops, and inside charred vehicles. Walls had collapsed, and bloodstains covered every corner.
The entire governorate was overwhelmed by the smell of burning and death. It was completely besieged and cut off from the outside world, including the National Hospital. There was no water, no electricity, no fuel, no bread, and no medical supplies. The summer heat only compounded the crisis.
One hospital worker recalls:
“Our staff and volunteers worked continuously for a week. None of us could leave because shelling was everywhere and snipers had positioned themselves on rooftops overlooking every road. Replacement teams could not reach us for the same reason. There was no fuel, and many of our colleagues had themselves been displaced from their villages. They were busy finding shelter for their families and caring for their own wounded.”
During the assault, in addition to the killings inside the hospital, tank shells, mortars, and machine gun fire struck the hospital building. The northern section of the roof was damaged, rupturing the water pipes and causing severe structural cracks. Walls, doors, and windows throughout the hospital were damaged, while indiscriminate gunfire inside the emergency department and emergency intensive care unit destroyed equipment and furnishings.
The diesel fuel needed to run the generators had also run out. By the end of that week, the hospital was in desperate need of everything: sutures, needles, surgical gloves, medicines, and basic medical supplies. But above all, the absence of water had become a catastrophe.
One physician at the hospital recalls that a supermarket shipped small bottles of drinking water. A doctor and a nurse were pulling the boxes inside when they noticed a nurse standing outside the radiology department, her eyes fixed on the water. She did not ask for any.
“The nurse handed her two bottles,” the doctor recalls, “but tears had already reached her eyes before the bottles reached her hands. What struck me was the look on her face. It was a mixture of desperate need and the dignity that kept her from asking. I asked her, ‘Will two bottles be enough?’ She replied, ‘There are many of us here in the department. We’re all thirsty.'”
With no functioning waste management system, the medical staff resorted to burning some of the hospital’s medical waste. The smoke and fumes worsened the pollution inside the hospital, triggering asthma attacks and breathing difficulties among some wounded patients and members of the medical staff. But the greatest challenge remained the growing number of bodies.
By the time armed groups from the tribal factions and the Ministries of Defense and Interior withdrew on 20 July, the number of victims had grown beyond counting.
One doctor recalls:
“The bodies first filled the morgue. When there was no room left, they overflowed into the refrigerated storage yard beside it on the southern side, then into the courtyard in front of the MRI department, then into corridors throughout the hospital, both nearby and farther away, and eventually across the open grounds surrounding the building and onto the sidewalks outside. Meanwhile, families were still retrieving bodies from homes, public buildings, and streets, loading them into vehicles and bringing them to the hospital. Some pickup trucks remained parked with their cargo of bodies because there was simply nowhere left to unload them. A significant number of the victims were men and women wearing traditional religious dress. The dead ranged in age from one year old to nearly ninety.”
As the days passed in the intense July heat, the bodies began to swell, decompose, and leak fluids. The smell grew stronger each day until it became unbearable inside the hospital and for nearly a kilometer around it. The decomposing bodies themselves became a public health threat, risking infection of the wounds of patients throughout the hospital.
One doctor says:
“Enormous swarms of flies appeared, along with other insects larger than anything we had seen before, bringing with them the threat of disease for the wounded, the patients, and the staff. The question everyone kept asking was: ‘How are we going to bury them?'”
Multiple testimonies from hospital staff indicate that they initially hoped the siege would be lifted so that families could come to identify their relatives and bury them in their family cemeteries. That, too, proved impossible. Most family cemeteries lie west of the city of Sweida, within range of the attackers’ positions. Many families had also been displaced and were struggling simply to care for the living, the wounded, the sick, and the elderly.
One doctor recalls:
“It was complete chaos. Complete chaos. The religious leaders did not answer our calls. What was especially striking was the absence of assistance from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. They are the ones trained and equipped for situations like this, with the proper protective gear. We had no experience, no protective clothing, and no equipment. We even discussed bringing in an excavator to dig a mass grave east of the hospital, but none of us dared make that decision.”
“The staff and volunteers tried to move some of the bodies to clear a passage through the hospital, but they failed. The bodies had become too heavy, the smell was overwhelming, and we had no protective suits to prevent the fluids leaking from the bodies from soaking into our hands and clothing. We did not begin transferring the bodies until ten days later, when protective suits similar to those used during the COVID-19 pandemic finally arrived, along with enough body bags.”
The forensic pathologist, together with the medical team and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, documented and registered 1,275 bodies at Sweida National Hospital. Of these, 726 underwent forensic examination. Among them were 121 unidentified bodies whose clothing suggested they were residents of Sweida.
The forensic pathologist explains:
“We recorded each body’s identifying characteristics directly on the body bag, including sex, estimated age, clothing, tattoos, and any distinguishing marks. The bodies were then transported to an area on the outskirts of the city, where a mass grave had been prepared. Religious leaders conducted the funeral prayers before they were buried.”
Hospital staff also recorded approximately 80 bodies belonging to members of the General Security forces and Bedouin tribal fighters. These were coordinated with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which took custody of them and transported them to Damascus.
One doctor recalls:
“We managed to remove the bodies, but there was still no running water. At the very least, we needed water to drink and to wash the blood that covered the floors and walls throughout the hospital. Residents began bringing us small bottles of water, along with vinegar and chlorine, so that we could clean and disinfect the building.”
He continues:
“The local community also took turns bringing food for the patients and the staff after the hospital kitchen exhausted its supplies. There were no vegetables, no meat, and no fruit. We survived on whatever bulgur, lentils, and other legumes people could provide. We had to ration every meal so that each patient received only a small portion, hoping the food would last as long as possible because none of us knew when the siege would end.”
By the time the assault was over, the hospital itself had been rendered inoperable.
For any physician, seeing the place that had become a second home reduced to that state was perhaps the deepest wound.
One of the hospital’s doctors says:
“Had we not been under a complete siege, Sweida National Hospital should have been closed entirely until it could be rehabilitated. At the very least, it needed to be cleaned of the blood and the remains left behind by the wounded, the accumulated medical waste had to be removed, the hospital had to be disinfected to prevent outbreaks of disease, the walls damaged by shelling had to be repaired, and the shattered windows and doors replaced.”
Despite its condition, the hospital continued to receive emergency cases, referring patients requiring abdominal, neurosurgical, or orthopedic operations to Salkhad Hospital, which, from that day onward, was operating far beyond capacity.
Salkhad Hospital became the referral center not only for patients from the Shahba district and the city of Sweida, but also for residents of the Salkhad area itself, which had taken in more than 100,000 displaced people from the western and northern countryside, a population roughly five times larger than its own.
