Syria Says Jordan Struck Its Villages Without Warning, Killing Seven

A Jordanian airstrike killed seven people in southern Syria on Monday evening, October 26, including a grandmother and three children in a tent in the village of al-Taff. Syria's civil defence said three other family members were wounded in that strike. The bodies were recovered afterward.

The dead also included Riyad Karrad, 80, killed in the al-Shayah farms near Nassib in the Deraa countryside, and Mutlaq Abu al-Khalil, 60, killed in Shuhayb in northern Suwayda. Syrian customs authorities closed the Nassib crossing with Jordan on Tuesday, October 27, then reopened it to passenger and commercial traffic on Wednesday, October 28.

Jordan said its air force struck what it called dens of terrorist organisations in southern Syria and killed more than 20 ISIL fighters. The operation was presented as retaliation for an assault on a Greek Orthodox church in Hamoud, in the Karak governorate, about 120km southwest of Amman. That attack killed nine people and wounded at least 34. Jordanian authorities called the perpetrators extremist terrorists, and King Abdullah II promised to answer with an iron fist. Three men connected to the church attack were arrested on Monday, hours before the strikes on Syria.

Damascus disputed Jordan's account. The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had registered complete reservation over the attacks and that they took place without prior coordination or notification with the Syrian side. An official inside the ministry described the strikes as treacherous. Jordan had said the operation was carried out in coordination with Syrian authorities.

Navvar Saban, a researcher in security and military affairs at the Arab Center for Contemporary Syrian Studies, said both governments have a political case to make. Amman wants to show it acted against a serious threat through legitimate security channels, he said, while Damascus cannot afford to appear to have approved an operation that killed Syrian families. He added that the investigation needs to establish who communicated with whom, when, and about which target.

Images of a slain grandmother and her three grandchildren circulated on Tuesday as anger mounted in Syria. Saban said the reaction also reflects an expectation that authorities in Damascus should now be able to protect Syrians and demand answers when they are harmed. He said if people feel Damascus is more concerned with protecting the relationship with the Jordanians than with accountability, some of that anger could turn inward.

Jordan has struck Syria several times since 2023, generally targeting arms and drug smugglers. Under former President Bashar al-Assad, southern Syria became a route for cross-border captagon trafficking, and some of that activity is believed to have continued since the Assad regime fell in December 2024. A January 2024 strike, documented by Human Rights Watch, killed women and children.

Sean Yom, an expert on Jordan at Temple University, said Jordan absorbed many attacks before, but this one was different because it targeted a Christian church in the tribal heartland of Karak. He said security and policing remain core strengths of the Jordanian state, and that pressure to be responsive is acute. Yom also said Syria needs trading partners like Jordan, while Jordan wants a stable Syria that can take back refugees, help seal the border, and resist Israeli annexation in the West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon.

Syria's Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes as a violation of sovereignty but said Damascus is working with Amman to establish a joint security committee for border security. Saban said an investigation would not by itself explain why the people were killed. Families, he said, deserve a specific answer about the strike that killed their relatives.