Public anger in Syria has threatened to boil over following disagreements between Amman and Damascus over Jordanian attacks on the southern Syrian regions of Deraa and Suwayda on Monday evening.
Jordan said its air force had killed more than ۲۰ ISIL (ISIS) fighters in retaliatory strikes on what it called “dens of terrorist organisations in southern Syria”, linked to suspects accused of being behind last week’s attack on a Greek Orthodox church in the kingdom, which was claimed by the group.
But the next day, anger mounted in Syria as images spread of a slain grandmother and her three grandchildren.
While Jordan has launched attacks on Syria in the past, including assaults that led to civilian casualties, this latest episode seems to have captured public anger.
“The anger also reflects an expectation that the authorities in Damascus should now be able to protect Syrians and demand answers when they are killed or harmed,” Navvar Saban, a researcher in security and military affairs at the Arab Center for Contemporary Syrian Studies, told Al Jazeera.
“If people feel Damascus is more concerned with protecting the relationship with the Jordanians than accountability, some of the anger could turn inward.”
Contradicting accounts
Monday’s attack reportedly came in response to the assault on a Greek Orthodox church that killed nine people and wounded at least ۳۴ others in the village of Hamoud in the Karak governorate, about ۱۲۰km (۷۵ miles) southwest of the capital, Amman.
Jordanian authorities said the attack was carried out by “extremist terrorists”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II promised to respond with an “iron fist”.
“Jordan has absorbed many terrorist attacks before, but this one was especially brazen given the Christian church and the nature of the event being targeted,” Sean Yom, an expert on Jordan at Temple University in the United States, told Al Jazeera.
“Because of its unprecedented nature, explicitly targeting a protected Christian minority in the tribal heartland of Karak, the government instantly felt popular demands to show results from the investigation and arrest of the perpetrators. This pressure to be responsive is especially acute right now, because security and policing remain core strengths of the Jordanian state.”
Jordanian authorities arrested three men connected to the attack on the church on Monday. That evening, Jordan also launched the attack on southern Syria, which it said was carried out in coordination with authorities in Damascus.
But Damascus has contradicted that account.
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it had informed Jordan of its “complete reservation” over the attacks, and said they took place “without prior coordination or notification with the Syrian side”. An official described the strikes as “treacherous”.
“Both governments have something to defend politically,” Saban said. “Amman wants to show that it acted against a serious threat through legitimate security channels. On the other hand, Damascus cannot afford to appear to have approved an operation that killed Syrian families. The investigation needs to establish who communicated with whom, when, and about which target. Until then, I would avoid either assuming Syria secretly approved everything or treating the coordination as a simple misunderstanding.”
The family’s bodies were recovered after they were killed by the Jordanian strike on a tent in the village of al-Taff, in the Lajat area of northeastern Deraa province. Syria’s civil defence said three other family members were wounded in the attack.
Meanwhile, in the al-Shayah farms near Nassib, in the Deraa countryside, an ۸۰-year-old man named Riyad Karrad was also killed by a strike. Another man named Mutlaq Abu al-Khalil, ۶۰, was killed in Shuhayb, in Suwayda’s northern countryside.
Syrian customs authorities closed the Nassib border crossing with Jordan on Tuesday, before reopening it to passenger and commercial traffic on Wednesday.
Syrian-Jordanian relations
Jordan has launched several air strikes on Syria since ۲۰۲۳. It says those strikes generally target arms or drug smugglers.
Under the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad, southern Syria became the site of cross-border drug smuggling, including the stimulant captagon. Some of those operations are believed to have continued after the fall of the Assad regime. At times, the Jordanian strikes have killed civilians, such as a January ۲۰۲۴ attack that Human Rights Watch said killed women and children.
Since the fall of the regime in December ۲۰۲۴, relations between Amman and Damascus have been lukewarm, though slowly improving. Analysts say this is down to shared interests.
“Syria needs healthy trading and commercial partners like Jordan, and Jordan wants Syria to become more secure and coherent for three reasons,” Yom said.
“A strong and friendly Syria can accept more repatriated refugees from Jordan, where there are still hundreds of thousands. It can also help seal the porous border and prevent arms and drug smuggling activities along their shared frontier. And lastly, a stronger allied Syria helps Jordan resist Israel’s creeping annexation, including the West Bank as well as more parts of Syria and Lebanon. So both have mutual interests tied to their sovereignty in maintaining good relations.”
Amman was also the site of a July ۲۰۲۵ trilateral agreement signing between Syria, the US and Jordan aimed at resolving internal disputes over violence in Suwayda.
“Only days before the strike, the two foreign ministers were discussing a strategic partnership and preparing another meeting of their High Coordination Council that is a significant investment in the relationship,” Saban said. “My expectation is that this is a serious strain rather than a rupture. Both governments have strong reasons to keep cooperation over the border, armed groups smuggling, etc. But this incident raises an uncomfortable question for Damascus.”
For its part, Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes as a violation of the country’s sovereignty but seemed to indicate relations with Amman would continue to be strengthened. It said Damascus is coordinating with Amman to establish a joint security committee to strengthen border security and prevent similar incidents.
In the meantime, Saban said that regardless of coordination with Damascus, accountability is needed to subside public anger.
“Even if an investigation established that Damascus approved some part of the operation, that would not explain why those people were killed or remove the need for accountability,” he said. “Ultimately, the families deserve a specific answer about the strike that killed their relatives, their friends, their family. Syrians need to understand why their families got killed.”
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