Due to the geographical location of the village and it’s placement between pro-government Alawi sect majority villages, and due to the Al Fan village support of the popular uprising, the pro-government Shabiha with support from the security forces threatened to destroy the village many times.
As the three systematic steps of all the previous massacres carried out by government forces:
Siege and shelling and cutting of electricity and communication
Raids
Extrajudicial killing, slaughtering, theft, robbery, and arrests
On Sunday, September 2, 2012, government forces’ tanks, soldiers, and Shabiha surrounded the village as the tanks started heavy and extreme shelling destroying several homes killing the people in their beds.
The second phase was raiding the village and robbing the shops and burning it and burning the houses and killing the livestock including cows, all to spread fear and terror between the people.
An eyewitness told us that government forces gathered a number of the village young men in the village square and opened fire on them executing them arbitrary with cold blood.
This small village residents lost 31 citizens including a woman as some of them was executed in their homes.
SNHR team in Hama managed to document the death of 31 victims from the villagers who were killed in addition to 50 wounded as the government forces abducted several residents and they are so far still missing.