Syrian authorities arrest main suspect in 2013 Baniyas mass killings

Key points

• Syrian authorities arrested Ali Kayali, also known as Mihrac Ural, over 2013 Baniyas mass killings.
• State media said he was caught while attempting to flee across the border.
• At least 264 civilians died in Bayda and 195 in Ras al-Nabaa, per SNHR figures.

Syrian authorities have arrested a suspect accused of involvement in the mass killing of civilians in the coastal city of Baniyas in 2013, state media reported. Intelligence officials apprehended Ali Kayali, also known as Mihrac Ural, while he was attempting to flee across the border, according to the state news agency SANA on Thursday. SANA did not say which country he was trying to reach.

Kayali has long been suspected of leading the killing of mostly Sunni civilians in the villages of Bayda and Ras al-Nabaa in the Baniyas region of western Syria in 2013. At the time, he led an armed group loyal to then-President Bashar al-Assad.

Scale of the killings

At least 264 civilians, including 36 children and 28 women, were killed in the massacre at Bayda, while 195 people, including 56 children, were killed in Ras al-Nabaa by Kayali's militia. The figures came from the Syrian Network for Human Rights and were quoted by SANA.

Human Rights Watch in 2013 described the killings as one of the deadliest instances of mass executions in Syria's conflict. Militias affiliated with Kayali are also accused of massacres in the Latakia, Aleppo and Idlib countrysides, leaving hundreds dead or wounded.

one of the deadliest instances of mass executions in Syria's increasingly bloody conflict

— Human Rights Watch

Suspect's background and other cases

Turkiye's state-run Anadolu news agency reported that Kayali is also the main suspect in the 2013 twin bombings in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, in which at least 52 people were killed. Born Mihrac Ural in 1956 in Hatay, Turkiye, he fled to Syria in 1982. SANA said he is married to Malak al-Fadel from the country's Alawite community, the religious minority to which former leader al-Assad belongs.

Earlier this month, Kayali's deputy Jamal Tarabulsi was arrested by Syrian security forces, as authorities intensify efforts to capture former regime officials and militia commanders accused of crimes against civilians during the civil war. The war began with pro-democracy protests in 2011 and took on a sectarian nature, with the Baniyas and Bayda killings often seen as a starting point of that shift. It ended with al-Assad's ousting in 2024 by a rebel group that took power in a lightning offensive.