An Account of the Jisr al-Shughur Massacre in 2011

In an earlier post, I made reference to the Jisr al-Shughur massacre in 2011, which was committed by Syrian insurgents against the personnel of a unit of the military intelligence (aka “military security”) stationed in the town of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib province in northwest Syria. The massacre was falsely portrayed to the outside world at the time as the Syrian government’s killing of supposed military defectors. In fact, what happened was that insurgents overwhelmed and wiped out a military intelligence unit in the town. The incident itself, which took place in June 2011, is noteworthy in that it illustrates that there was already an active insurgency within the first few months of the uprising.

For the sake of historical reference, I present below a translated account (slightly edited for clarity) of the massacre written in 2020 by Feda Ibrahim Fakhro, a government loyalist who originates from the Idlib locality of Ishtabraq, whose inhabitants were subject to a massacre at the hands of the insurgents when they overran Ishtabraq in 2015. Feda’s brother Fakhr was among the personnel of the Military Security unit in Jisr al-Shughur.

According to Feda’s account, 120 personnel were killed. He gives the names of 72 of those personnel, and six of them originating from Ishtabraq.

Muhammad Ali Ahmad, one of the slain members of the Military Security unit.