- 'I gave up one of my children, otherwise they would have killed both. I gave up one son so they wouldn't kill both. I gave this one up, but not the other. This one was older, the other was younger,' says Kerricha, now 82

- 'We saw them killing unarmed civilians. They killed our neighbor Hatim’s son with a tank shot,' says Majid Rammal, long-imprisoned son of Kerricha

HAMA, Syria

Muazzez Kerricha, 82, who was forced to choose between her two children during the 1982 Hama Massacre in Syria, has never heard from her brother since the massacre.

For decades, the Baath regime banned any mention of the massacre, but after 61 years of Baath rule ended in December 2024, survivors have begun to break their silence.

Regime forces raided homes and rounded up boys over the age of 15, forcing Kerricha to choose between her two sons.

Not wanting to lose both at once, she gave up her eldest, Majid, to protect his younger brother.

Majid returned home 13 years later, only to find that his father had died.

‘I was so afraid that they would slaughter my children’

Kerricha said the attacks on Hama began the evening of Feb. 2, 1982, the day her family returned from Aleppo.

"I was so afraid that they would slaughter my children because they had stabbed people with knives before.

"The attacks started in the evening. The windows were shaking from the intense tank attacks. We went down to the basement and piled soil and books behind the door."

She said they first heard airplanes overhead, and on the second day of the massacre, tanks began shelling homes.

She described how the army’s 47th Division detained young men when they entered the city center, calling the moment she was forced to give up her son “the hardest” of her life.

"When they entered our neighborhood, they took our young men, too. I begged them, pleading to take only one of my two sons. Because I sensed they would execute them.

"I gave up one of my children, otherwise they would have killed both. I gave up one son so they wouldn't kill both. I gave this one up, but not the other. This one was older, the other was younger," she said.

Kerricha said members of the Defense Battalions, affiliated with Rifaat Assad, also detained her husband during the raids.

“They took my husband, they were going to kill him. As women, we begged the commander, and they let him go.”

‘East of Omar ibn Khattab Mosque was full of dead bodies’

Kerricha said she left her house on the third day of the attacks to look for her brother’s daughter.

“When they let us out of the house, we saw many things. We saw them killing people. The east of Omar ibn Khattab Mosque was full of dead bodies.”

She said soldiers from the Defense Battalions also tried to attack the women in the neighborhood.

‘I sacrificed myself so that my mother could save my brother’

Her son, Majid Rammal, now 65, said that before the army came to their house, they were watching what was happening outside from the basement window.

“From there, we saw them killing unarmed civilians. They killed our neighbor Hatim’s son with a tank shot.”

Rammal said they were unable to move. “Only those who lived it know this fear. I sacrificed myself so that my mother could save my brother. When they took us away, I was thinking where they would execute us.”

He said they were taken by military vehicle to a porcelain factory on the road to Homs, a city about 44 kilometers (27 miles) to the south of Hama.

“It was very scary in the factory. The place resembled a horror movie. They tortured people until they killed them. They gouged out the eyes of Hikmet Hani, an ophthalmologist, with a piece of iron and executed him an hour later.”

Rammal said he was held in the factory for a month.

"We would enter the interrogation with 10 people and leave with three.

"During the interrogation, they accused us of being armed people. Their accusations were ready, they accused everyone of this. I did not accept these accusations."

Rammal said he was later transferred to Tadmor Prison, where he was tortured for 13 years.

Hama Massacre in 1982

The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that at least 40,000 civilians were massacred in Hama by regime forces through attacks and mass executions. The locations of their graves remain unknown.

More than 17,000 civilians detained in house raids were never heard from again.

End of Baath regime

With the fall of the Assad regime, survivors are now openly demanding justice for those killed and missing in the massacre.

After anti-regime forces took full control of Damascus on Dec. 8, 2024, following victories across multiple cities, they established reconciliation centers for former regime members to surrender. However, some refused, leading to clashes in various provinces.

The Baath Party’s 61-year rule — and the Assad family’s 53-year grip on power — officially ended with the opposition’s takeover of Syria’s capital.

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